i LI BRARY OF CONGRESS, t 

0 . 

{UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



/ 




THE HOUR WHICH COMETH, AND JSOW IS: 



SERMONS 



PREACHED IN 



INDIANA-PLACE CHAPEL, BOSTON, 



BY 

JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE. 




^BOSTON: 

WILLIAM "V. SPENCER, 

203 "WASHINGTON STREET. 
1868. 




Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by 
WILLIAM V. SPENCER, 
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



Stereotyped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry, 
19 Spring Lane. 



Presswork by John Wilson and Son. 



PREFACE. 



IHESE Sermons, having been mostly written in the 



course of the great American conflict of freedom 
against slavery, are necessarily frequent in allusions to 
this war. Surrounded with those whose sons, broth- 
ers, and friends were fighting and falling on so many 
bloody fields, this dark background is seen behind the 
figures in each discourse. 

I suppose that repetition of ideas and thoughts may 
be sometimes noticed by the reader. Such repetition 
is a defect in works of pure theory or intellectual sci- 
ence; but, in practical and spiritual works, we need, 
as in music, frequent variations on the same themes. 

The present edition differs only from the previous 
one, in omitting the last discourse, on the "Diary of 
1863," and adding those on "Relation of Christ to the 



Moral," "Negative and Positive Religion," "Weeds," 




Soul," "The Man of Sin, 



Melchizedek and his 



4 



PREFACE. 



"The Summer is Ended," and "God save the Com- 
monwealth of Massachusetts. * 

For the favor with which this volume of Sermons 
(preached to the Church of the Disciples in the regu- 
lar course of duty) has been received, I feel grateful, 
and hope the new edition will meet a like reception. 

James Freeman Clarke. 

Boston April, 1868. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

I. The Hour which cometh, and now is. . ■ . 1 

II. The Letter and the Spirit 12 

III. Prophets who have been since the World 

began. . . . . . . . 24 

IY. Steps of Belief. » < 34 

V. The Thorn in the Flesh. 43 

YI. Faithful over a few Things. . . „ .53 

VII. Moral Perspectives, . 66 

VIII. "If he sleep, he shall do well." " . . .76 

IX. Stand Still 87 

X. Grow Up . . 101 

XI. Life-Weariness. . , 109 

XII. The Fragments, . < 119 

XIII. All Souls are God's. . 131 

XIY. " The Accepted Time. 5 ' , . . . .141 

XY. "When he came to Himself." . . . 150 

XYI. The Cheerful Giver 160 

XVII. The Grace of God ', .174 

XVIII. "No Man cared for my Soul." . . . . 185 

XIX. Life and the Resurrection. .... 195 



6 CONTENTS. 

XX. Power or the Keys 218 

XXI. The Proper and the Becoming. . . . 235 

XXII. The Favorite Texts of Jesus. . . . . 246 

XXIII. He who exalteth Himself 258 

XXIY. Relation of Christ to the Soul. . . . 269 

XXV. The Man of Six 282 

XXVI. Melchizedek axb his Moral. . . . 295 

XXVII. Negative and Positive Religion. . . . 314 

XXVIII. Weeds. . . 330 

XXIX. The Summer is Ended 342 

XXX. "God save the Commonwealth of Massachu- 
setts." . . . . . . . 352 



SERMONS. 



i 

THE HOUR WHICH COMETH, AND NOW IS. 
John iv. 23: "The houe cometh, axd now is." 

THIS remarkable phrase is used twice by our Master, — 
once in regard to the true worship of the Father, which 
he declares to be coming, and to be already present ; and, 
again, in regard to those who are in their graves hearing his 
voice : they shall hear it, he says, and they hear it now. 
In somewhat the same way, he says of the harvest of faith 
which his disciples are to gather in, It will be harvest-time 
in four months, you say. Look ! I see the harvest ready 
to be gathered now. 

This blending of future and present is in the very nature 
of prophecy, which sees what is coming in what now is ; 
which sees the fruit in the flower, the flower in the bud ; 
which sees the action to be in the motive w T hich now is at 
work ; which perceives that an idea is potent enough to de- 
velop itself into a long series of actions ; which recognizes 
the antitype in its type ; and, in one lightning-flash of spir- 
itual perception, sees a whole landscape leaping out of the 
darkness of the future into the momentary illumination of 
the present. 

i a) 



2 



THE HOUR WHICH COMETH, AND NOW IS. 



There is a future of which we know nothing till it has 
arrived : there is another future, which we know before it 
comes. Some things can be foreseen almost as if they were 
seen. Some things are here already, potentially, before they 
are here actually, — are here in their seeds and roots, before 
they are here in their fruits and results. <; There is a field 
of grain," says the farmer. " Grain ! " you reply. " I see 
nothing there : there is only black earth." " Yes," the farm- 
er answers : " it is sown with grain." When the seed is 
there, the grain is virtually there. 

Therefore we celebrate the birthdays of great men, re- 
garding each of them as the seed of a great future. We keep 
the 22d of February, and close our banks, fire cannon, listen 
to orations, because on that day a little child was born in 
whose coming came the deliverance of America from Euro- 
pean vassalage. Fifty years passed from the birthday of the 
child before he did his work ; but we celebrate not the day 
when the work was done, but the day when the child was 
born to do it. The whole nation goes back to the cradle of 
George Washington, and says, " The hour comes, and now 
is, when America shall be free." So we celebrate Christ- 
mas, the birthday of Christ. So all Christendom goes, on 
that sacred morning, with the Eastern Magi, to offer its 
gifts of grateful love to the little unconscious infant. So, in 
Catholic prayer-books to-day, we find prayers addressed to 
the infant Jesus ; that is, prayers to a purely ideal being, — 
to a being who does not exist : for surely there is no infant 
Jesus now! Yet so clearly do we see that the essence of a 
great event is not in the thing done, but in the power which 
is to do it, that, when Christ is born, we regard Christianity 
as established. 

With the same ideal tendency, the same disposition to put 
the idea of a thing above the actual thing, we keep the 4th 
of July as the day of National Independence. But we did 
not become independent on the 4th of July, 1776 : Ave be- 



THE HOUR WHICH COMETH, AND NOW IS. 



3 



came independent not till some years after that. All that 
was done on the 4th of J uly was the enunciation of the idea 
of independence. The purpose, the resolution, the determi- 
nation, were born that day : so we celebrate the birth of 
Independence on that day. 

There are some things, no doubt, which are not here till 
they are accomplished ; but other things are really here when 
they are begun. That which depends on outward circum- 
stances, on contrivances, on outward force, or will, is not 
here till the circumstances take place. The discovery of 
America, the invention of printing, the landing of the Pil- 
grims, carry their chief importance in the events themselves, 
— not in the idea lying back of them. But everything which 
depends on spiritual insight and moral purpose virtually comes 
when the truth is seen and uttered, when the moral purpose 
is declared. When Martin Luther fixed his paper against 
the door of Wittenberg Cathedral on the Eve of All-Saints, 
1517, the Reformation came. We date the Reformation 
from that day ; not from the day when the reformers agreed 
upon their creed at Augsburg, in 1530. When the idea is 
born, the events flowing from that idea are born. 

In fact, there are certain truths which are so commanding 
and convincing, that, when they are once seen and uttered, 
certain consequences are already logically certain. Such 
truths are so adapted to the human reason, conscience, and 
heart, that they must be accepted sooner or later. Such 
truths are mighty powers introduced into human affairs, 
which will produce inevitable consequences. No matter 
what is the resistance of unbelief, the obstinacy of preju- 
dice, the bitterness of opposing interests, the rage of party 
madness ; no matter what falsehood, calumny, slander, assail 
their champion, — these truths are mighty, and must prevail, 
though it may be, as the poet describes it, by means of 

" A friendless conflict, lingering long 
Through weary day and weary year." 



4 THE HOUR WHICH COMETH, AND NOW IS. 



The prophets of the Old Testament were men to whom 
God gave the favor of seeing the future in the present ; of 
seeing the hour which was coming, as if it were already ar- 
rived. Standing on the mount of vision, they overlooked the 
large panorama of the future ; they saw the waving forests 
near at hand, the blue valleys below, the fields farther on 
waving with grain, the rivers winding like lines • of light 
through the distance, the pale sea on the horizon, the faint 
mountain-lines far away. They saw in the principles and 
motives, in the ambitions and purposes, already at work, the 
results that must inevitably follow. Not by any mere politi- 
cal sagacity, which is a very short-sighted affair, but by that 
spiritual insight which sees the real beneath the accidental, 
the inevitable law working amid all varying circumstances, 
the prophets saw, in grief and anguish of heart, the national 
woes which were to come from national sins, and the resto- 
ration which would follow national repentance. They saw 
more still : they saw, in all the mysterious workings of events, 
the preparation for a higher revelation of truth and love. 
They saw in the whole Jewish law the preparation for a gos- 
pel higher than the law ; in all the Jewish ritual, the prepa- 
ration for a worship of truth and love. They saw the coming 
of the Son of man ; the approach of 

" That far-off, divine event, 
To which the whole creation tends. " 

Some kind of prophetic sight akin to this supports all great 
reformers, — all those who are struggling to establish spir- 
itual ideas, moral principles. They see the thing they are 
to do almost as if it were already done. Trusting them- 
selves to the simple power of truth, having faith in God and 
in the human heart, they feel strong enough to battle alone 
against a world. The Jesuit, who has made a great eccle- 
siastical machine ; who has built up, cunningly, a system of 
checks and balances ; who has organized an army of monk- 



THE HOUR WHICH COMETH, AND NOW IS. 



0 



ish soldiers, which he wields in the cause of Holy Church ; 
who induces rich people to leave him their money, in order 
to save their souls ; who manages statesmen and kings 
through their confessors, and lays his hand on the colleges 
and schools of a nation in order to proselyte little children, 
— he has his hour, too, but it is only the hour of success. 
When his plans fail, when his schemes are detected, when 
his cunning is baffled by a deeper sagacity, he has no re- 
source. His failure is certain. But the man who trusts in 
truth never fails. Savonarola and Huss, on the scaffold and 
at the stake, were just as sure of victory as if they saw it 
present. We are no more certain now of the coming end 
of slavery than Follen and Channing were when they died ; 
though then slavery seemed triumphant. All these could 
say, " The hour cometh, and now is." All saw the future 
in the present. Toussaint L'Ouverture, in his dungeon, was 
more sure of the success of his cause than Napoleon of his. 
Wordsworth well said to him, — 

" Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behind 
Powers that will work for thee, — air, earth, and skies. 
There's not a breathing of the common wind 
That will forget thee : thou hast great allies. 
Thy friends are exultations, agonies, 
And love, and man's unconquerable mind." 

When Jesus said, " The hour cometh, and now is, when 
the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and 
in truth,'' he only on the surface of the earth knew what true 
worship was. Men worshipped God, as though he loved 
sacrifices ; as though he took pleasure in seeing his creatures 
torment themselves ; as though he were far off, and could not 
easily hear ; as though he were angry, and had to be ap- 
peased ; as though he loved to be praised ; as if he were 
capable of being teased, by much speaking, into consent ; as 
if a solemn form were agreeable to him. But Jesus saw in 



6 THE HOUR WHICH COMETH, AND NOW IS. 



his heart that diviner worship, the love of a child to its father 
and mother ; the trust of a weak creature in a perfectly wise, 
good, and great Being ; the confidence of a sinful creature 
in one all mercy and compassion ; the worship which does 
not need to speak in order to be heard ; which is the motion 
of a hidden fire that trembles in the breast ; that worship, 
which, when it comes, will make every place a church, every 
day the Lord's day, all work devotion, all joy thanksgiving, 
all events blessings, and all of nature and life full of God. 
Jesus, feeling this worship in his own soul, and kuowiug its 
beauty, majesty, and power, saw that all other worship ; all 
of mere form, ceremony, ritual ; ail of worship born of fear, 
anxiety, doubt ; all prayer to which men are dragged by 
conscience or led by custom, — must cease and determine, 
when this divine and heavenly worship is once known. So 
he said, " The hour cometh, and now is." 

And so, on the other occasion, when he said, The hour 
cometh, and now is, when all that are in their graves shall 
hear the voice of the Son of man, and come forth, to the 
resurrection of life or the resurrection of judgment. Come 
out of their graves, — the graves of ignorance, error, sin ; 
out of the graves of selfishness, sensuality, falsehood ; out 
of the graves of worldliness, covetousness, cunning, and 
fraud, in which they have buried themselves. He saw that 
his Father would one day reach every soul ; in this world, 
or in the next world, or in some world, would reach every 
soul of man. He saw, that sooner or later, as long as in 
every man there is heart, reason, and conscience, the reason 
must at last see the truth, the conscience must feel it, the 
heart must love it. And so all in their graves shall hear 
his voice and come up, — the faithful to see their own faith- 
fulness rewarded with entrance into fuller life ; the unfaithful 
to be judged, to know at last the evil of their evil, and so 
take also the first step back towards good : therefore a res- 
urrection, a rising-up, for all, — a rising-up of the good into 



THE HOUR WHICH COMETH, AND NOW IS. 



7 



love, a rising-up of the evil into truth. He saw that distant 
day as though already here, because he had once for all 
spoken the immortal truth, to which sooner or later every 
knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth, 
and things under the earth. And so, dying on the cross ; 
disgraced, defeated, conquered ; forsaken by his friends, be- 
trayed by his own disciples, leaving not one on earth who 
understood him, — he could say to his Father, "I have glo- 
rified thee on the earth ; 1 have finished the work thou gayest 
me to do." 

If he saw it then, surely we may see it now. If every 
one of the " glorious company of the apostles, the goodly 
fellowship of the prophets, and the noble army of martyrs." 
saw, each in his prison, at his stake, in his lowly, thankless 
toil, amid hatred, persecution, and opposition, — saw the day 
of triumph coming, as though it had already come, — we 
surely can see the day of a purified Christianity, of a freed 
Church, of the marriage-supper of nature and revelation, 
reason and religion, works and faith, morality and piety. 

Yes, the hour cometh, and now is, when Christian doc- 
trine shall be redeemed from the Jewish and Pagan errors 
which have clung to it, and so be brought back to the sim- 
plicity of Christ ; when men shall no more be taught to be 
afraid of God, as though he were angry, and had to be ap- 
peased by a bloody sacrifice ; no more be driven from their 
dear Father by Pagan doctrines concerning his need of some 
expiatory victim, before he can forgive his children. They 
will no more be taught that man is all corrupt and evil, — 
nothing but sin : they will 1 be taught to see in every soul 
something good, something allied to God, some conscience, 
some heart, something of holy fire lingering under the ashes 
of vice and sin. The houe cometh, and now is, when 
men shall learn to respect human nature, and not despise it 
as wholly corrupt ; and then they will love each other. The 
hour cometh, and now is, when they will look on the 



8 



THE HOUR WHICH COMETH, AND NOW IS. 



vicious and the criminal with pity, not contempt, and try to 
help them out of their evil ; when those who have been 
abandoned, and left without any sympathy or brotherly aid, 
shall be sought out and taught and saved. Then the Chris- 
tian Church, united by the holy spirit of humanity and broth- 
erly love, will come together, and be at one ; the Catholic 
no longer hating the Protestant, nor the Orthodox despising 
the heretic, but all working together in the great cause of 
human improvement. That hour cometh, and now is. 

It is told of Michael Angelo, that, when he had spent two 
years in painting the frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine 
Chapel, he had acquired such a habit of looking up, that he 
could not look down ; and, if he wished to read a letter, he 
had to hold it up above his forehead in order to see it. The 
Christian Church has placed Christianity so entirely in the 
worship of God, who is over all, that it has lost the power 
of seeing the same God, who is through all, and in us all. 
It only sees God above us, not God in nature around, not 
God in man's human soul. Its religion, therefore, has all 
gone into worship, into churches, into Sundays. But the 
hour cometh, A2a) now is, when Christianity is to be seen 
in the street, in the shop, in all human life, and God to be 
felt as " all in all." 

Certainly we may say, that the hour cometh, and now is, 
when a rational and humane religion shall take the place of 
a religion of form and dogma. Do we not see how every 
man, who preaches and teaches in any way this religion of 
love, takes hold of the hearts of all men, even those who 
seem the most rigid and the most closely imprisoned in their 
creeds? See what a general respect and love have come 
around the memory of Theodore Parker ! — not because of 
his opposition to the supernatural part of Christianity, but 
in spite of that opposition. It is because of his broad hu- 
manity, his generous love of truth, justice, and right. See 
how such men as Robertson in England, and Beecher in 



THE HOUR WHICH COMETH, AND NOW IS. 



9 



America, guide the hearts aud the thoughts of tens of thou- 
sands, because they are prophets of this great future, — of the 
day when God and Christ shall be seen to be the friends of 
all human beings, and reason and revelation be wholly at 
one ! And see the universal expression of esteem and love 
which has risen from the whole land like a cloud of incense, 
honoring the heroic and generous soul of our own brother 
Starr King ! The 4i Xew York Independent " forgets that he 
was a Unitarian and Universalist, and honors him with warm 
tears of affectionate sorrow. The Democratic papers forget 
that he was Antislavery and Republican, and give the truest 
and best testimonies to his character and worth. It is be- 
cause he was a youthful prophet and example of the hour 
which Cometh, axd now is ; of the future day of the 
Church and State ; of the religion of. reason, justice, human- 
ity ; of the Christ who is to come, and is already here. 

There are those, who, taking a literal view of Scripture, 
teach that Jesus Christ is coming back to earth in some par- 
ticular year, in outward form, and in some particular place. 
!Xo doubt he is coming. His hour cometh, and now is. He 
is coming more abundantly, just as he has come already, in 
a greater inspiration of faith, a greater sense of the nearness 
of God, a greater love for God and man, a universal out- 
flowing of humanity and brotherhood to all. That is the 
second coming of Christ, and the only second coming that 
has any significance or value to us. If he should come out- 
wardly in the sky, with the noise of a trumpet and a great 
light, that would be only a portent, a wonder, — something 
to excite astonishment, fear, admiration ; but it would not 
make a single man any more of a Christian than he is now. 
That was the sort of sign which the Jews wanted, aud of 
which Christ said. " An evil and adulterous generation seeketh 
after a sign ; and there shall no sign be given them but that 
of the Prophet Jonah." 

Jesus comes as his truth comes, as his love comes. He 



10 



THE HOUR WHICH COMETH, AND NOW IS. 



comes with his Father to dwell in us, and we in hirn. As he 
comes so, every knee bows. Sin is conquered. The last 
enemy, death, is overcome. Christ comes to redeem us from 
the power of all evil. Then heaven cometh, and now is. 
Then, God's will being done on earth as it is in heaven, 
heaven begins here. It is here already in its seeds and 
roots ; and we have the foretaste of the world to come, the 
first-fruits of a higher life, while we are yet dwelling in 
this. 

And so, lastly,, we realize that death is nothing ; that we 
are already immortal ; that the hour of immortal life com- 
eth, and now T is. Death ceases to exist to a Christian. He 
looks forward to the time when he shall fall asleep, and wake 
again, surrounded by all whom he loves, and who love him ; 
by the spirits of the just made perfect ; and shall find the 
truth of what Plato and Milton said, — that what we call 
life is death, and what we call death is life. For Plato says 
in a striking passage in his Gorgias, " I should not wonder 
if Euripides spoke truth when he said, c Who knows if to 
live is not really to die, and to die really to live ; and that 
we now are, in reality, dead? Our present existence is per- 
haps our death, and this body our tomb.' " And so Milton 
says, — 

" Meekly thou didst resign this earthly load 

Of death, called life, which us from life doth sever." 

That wdiich Plato and Euripides thought possible, Jesus 
saw to be real ; and so he said, " He who liveth and believeth 
in me shall never die." So he always called death sleep ; 
so his disciples said that he had abolished, annihilated death ; 
so he took away its terror out of their hearts ; and they felt 
that though to live was to be with him, yet to die w r as to gain 
more than they lost. 

Thus it is that immortality and heaven are coming, because 
they are already here. Thus it is that true worship, pure 



THE HOUR WHICH COMETH, AND NOW IS. 11 



Christianity, humane religion, are sure to come in their full 
and ripe harvest, because they are already here in their seed 
and germ. So it is, that the living experience and the deep 
convictions of the human heart are always a sure word of 
prophecy of the glory which is to be revealed ; and the life 
which comes now from God and Christ is the promise and 
assurance of the life which is to come hereafter. 



II 



THE LETTEE AND THE SPIEIT. 
2 Cor. iii. 6: "Who also hath made us able ministers of the 

NEW COVENANT : NOT OF THE LETTER, BUT OF THE SPIRIT ; FOR 
THE LETTER KILLETH, BUT THE SPIRIT GIYETH LIFE." 

Rom. ii. 28, 29 : " He is not a jew which is one outwardly: 

BUT HE IS A JEW WHICH IS ONE INWARDLY; IN THE SPIRIT, 
AND NOT IN THE LETTER; WHOSE PRAISE IS NOT OF MEN, BUT 
OF GOD." 

THE chief distinction between man and man, in any pur- 
suit or occupation, is this, — that the one sees the spirit 
of a thing, and works in that ; the other, only the letter, 
and sticks in that. 

For in everything there is a spirit and a letter. It is not 
merely in the Bible, but everywhere. Everything which 
exists, exists literally and spiritually ; in its form and its 
essence ; in its body and its soul. 

For example : Suppose a man should undertake to de- 
scribe a landscape, — a scene in the White Mountains, or in 
the heart of the Mississippi Valley. He might give you the 
height and position of the mountains ; state accurately the 
size of the trees, and the position of everything in the fore- 
ground, the middle distance, and beyond : but he would not 
give you anything, after all, but a number of details. An- 
other man, with a few suggestive words, would place you in 
the scene itself. You would feel the majestic presence of the 
mountain, with its varying shades of sombre, dusky green, 
or its purple tints melting into aerial blue. You would feel 

(12) 



9 



THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT. 



13 



the air stirring among the great multitude of leaves, and 
waking the deep silence of the forest. You would feel the 
life of the great sycamores, reaching out their white arms 
over the lazy streams. The one description, though perfectly 
accurate, would awaken no interest, suggest no picture, and 
be forgotten in an hour : the other would fill your imagina- 
tion with the presence of Nature herself ; and years after, 
when it came up to you, you would scarcely know whether 
it was some place you had heard described, or some place 
where you had been yourself. The one gave you the letter 
of the scene ; the other, its spirit. I recollect several such 
descriptions which I read in childhood ; and they seem like 
something I have seen. Some of Walter Scott's descriptions 
are of that kind. Shakespeare's are all so. Take, for ex- 
ample, his description of a brook : — 

" The current that with gentle murmur glides, 
Thou know'st, being stopt, impatiently doth rage ; 
But, when his fair course is not hindered, 
He makes sweet music with the enamelled stones, 
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge 
He overtaketh in his pilgrimage : 
And so, by many winding nooks, he strays, 
With willing sport, to the wild ocean." 

The peculiarity of this description is, that the brook is alive 
all through : it " glides gently ; " it 64 rages impatiently ; " it 
kisses the sedge ; it is a pilgrim, straying with willing sport 
to the ocean, which is also alive and " wild," untamed by 
man. So Milton, so Wordsworth, so Tennyson, so all great 
poets, describe Nature ; not as in an auctioneer's catalogue, 
or as on a surveyor's map, but discovering everywhere its 
soul. Milton describes the sun, — 

" Who, scarce uprisen, 
With wheels yet hovering o'er the ocean-brim, 
Shot parallel to the earth his dewy ray;" 



14 



THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT. 



which gives you an image of Apollo in his car. But he 
describes the same sunrise elsewhere by making him a 
king : — 

" Right against the eastern gate, 
Where the great sun begins his state, 
Robed in flowers and amber light." 

And so he makes the moon a traveller through the sky, — 

"Like one that had been led astray 
Through the heaven's wide, pathless way ; 
And oft, as if her head she bowed, 
Stooping through a fleecy cloud." 

It is not the chemistry of Nature, which is its letter, not 
the proportions of silex and alumina in the landscape, which 
touch us most, and are most valuable : but the soul of Na- 
ture, the glory and beauty which no tongue can describe, 
which poetry only can suggest, never catalogue ; the soul of 
peace, of harmony ; the soul which seems almost to speak to 
us, — this is what brings us near to God, and gives the out- 
ward world its highest value. Neither the Greeks nor the 
Jews saw much of this soul in Nature. Christianity has 
enabled us to feel it, and has created in us the power by 
which, in modern times and in modern poetry, man and 
Nature come into communion and harmony. This is a part 
of the atoning work of Christ, — to make man at one with 
Nature around him. Nature was terrible to the Old World, 
— full of a demoniac spirit. Lucretius traces all Pagan re- 
ligion to a fear of natural portents. Christianity has recon- 
ciled man and Nature, and made us feel that she is our mother 
and our friend. 

So, in every man, there is the letter and the spirit. You 
can describe him by enumerating his actions, and giving his 
phrenological tendencies, — so much conscientiousness, so 
much reverence, so much combativeness ; but a deeper saga- 
city goes below all this, and finds the man's soul, that which 



THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT. 



15 



gives unity to his life. Love is more sagacious still : it 
feels, by a sure instinct, the inmost character, and is wiser 
than wisdom. You cannot know any one till you love him ; 
because, till then, you only know him externally : the secret 
of his life you do not know. We feel that no one under- 
stands us who does not love us ; for beneath all our actions 
and all our opinions, all our outward life and character, there 
is the inward stress and tendency of our nature, our aspira- 
tion, our longing, our struggle ; which is so deep down, that 
no one knows it unless by sympathy. 

Look at two portraits : one gives the features ; the other, 
the soul. One is after the letter ; the other, after the spirit. 
In one, you have the outside of the man, — his husk, his 
shell, the mask he wears : in the other, there is a revelation 
of hie inmost nature. The last is the only kind of portrait 
of a friend I ever care to have. 

I recollect very well the first time I ever saw those won- 
derful portraits, by the great masters of art, which thus give 
us the soul of the man they paint. I recollect a picture of 
Ignatius Loyola, by Rubens, at Warwick Castle ; one of 
Grotius, by Rembrandt, at the Bodleian Library in Oxford ; 
one by Titian, at Hampton Court. It seemed as if I could 
never see enough of them. I went on, and returned again 
to look more and more. In these pictures, there was told 
the whole history of the man's life, — all its stormy adven- 
ture, all its earnest longing ; agonies of thought, patiently 
endured ; the soul refined by fires of suffering, by infinite 
toil, until, at last, it had reached the summit of self-posses- 
sion and peace. I had supposed, till then, that portrait- 
painting was an inferior domain of art ; but, after seeing 
such revelations of character accomplished by portraits, I 
felt there was nothing higher. 

And so, when we come to truth, we see how this also has 
a letter and a spirit. The letter of Judaism, says the apos- 
tle, was its rites, its sabbath, its sacrifices, its priesthood, its 



16 



THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT. 



temple. That was all of Judaism that the Greeks and Ro- 
mans saw, — all that the scribes and Pharisees saw. But 
Paul says, " He is not a Jew who is one outwardly ; neither 
is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh : but he 
is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is of the 
heart, in. the spirit, and not in the letter." Socrates was 
a better Jew, in this sense, than Caiaphas : Seneca was a 
better Jew than Herod. 

But it took clear insight and strong courage to say this. 
" What ! this great sysfem of ceremonies, this great sacra- 
mental and sacrificial system, which Jehovah had instituted, 
in order to separate the Jews from all mankind, — is this 
all nothing? and only the inward spirit, that no one can tell 
anything about, — is that everything ? This is doing away 
with all distinctions, this sort of transcendental talk !" Con- 
ceive what the Pharisees must have thought of it. 

The old covenant had its spirit and its letter, and the letter 
was only for the sake of the spirit. The spirit of the Old 
Testament is its constant sense of one God, supreme, eternal, 
all holy, all good ; who requires of man justice and mercy ; 
w r hose law forbids all wrong from man to man ; protects 
the feeble, the poor, the stranger, and looks forward to the 
triumph of good over evil, truth over falsehood ; foresees a 
perfect world to come at last, in which there shall be no 
more oppression, cruelty, or sin ; in which all shall know 
God, from the least to the greatest. 

That is the spirit of the Old Testament, from Genesis to 
Malachi, — a spirit of justice and faith. All the rest is its 
letter. Just as God surrounds the juicy fruit of the palm 
with a hard shell, and, outside of that, with a fibrous husk, 
so that the milky pulp shall slowly sweeten and ripen till the 
time conies' for the nut to fall, and then the husk is torn off, 
and the shell broken ; so he surrounded the immature convic- 
tions of the Jewish nation with this hard shell of ceremony, 
this tough husk of sacrifices, meats, and sabbaths. It kept 



THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT. 



17 



them to themselves. It placed an element of mutual aver- 
sion between the Jew and the Gentile. So the inward spirit 
ripened slowly, from the days of Moses, when the nation was 
almost Egyptian and Pagan ; through the times of Elijah, 
when they worshipped the stately idols of their Syrian 
neighbors, the sun-god Baal, and " Astarte's becliamonded 
crescent ; " on through their Assyrian and Babylonish cap- 
tivities, when they learned some truths from Persian Magi ; 
on through the times of Ezekiel and Zechariah. The pro- 
phetic Muse of David sang to his harp some melodious 
anticipations of Jesus ; and Isaiah, " rapt into future times," 
announced a religion of the spirit as above all forms. At 
last, the fulness of the time had come : the husk and shell 
of the Jewish religion were broken away, and the fruit 
ripened out of the law into the gospel. 

But if he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, much more, 
surely, he is not a Christian who is one outwardly. If sac- 
rifices and priesthood did not make Judaism, neither do 
baptism and church-going make Christianity. The new 
covenant also has its letter and its spirit ; and, when we 
stick in the letter, we lose the spirit. Paul says of the new 
covenant, " God hath made us able ministers, not of its let- 
ter, but of its spirit ; for the letter killeth, but the spirit 
giveth life." 

All the forms of Christianity are means, and not ends : 
we need them as helps, not as results. Going to church does 
not make a Christian. Being baptized does not make a 
Christian. Professing Christianity does not make a Chris- 
tian. Only loving God and man makes a Christian. Yet 
there are many people and teachers who lay such stress on 
baptism and the Lord's Supper, and the letter of the Bible, 
that they really see less of the spirit of Christianity than 
Isaiah or David saw. A thousand years before Christ was 
born, David saw more of Christianity than those see who 
hesitate as to whether an infant can be saved who has not 
2 



18 



THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT. 



been baptized, or whether God can love a good heathen 
after he dies. Jesus, though a Jew, was less particular in 
keeping outwardly the Jewish sabbath than many Christians 
are in an outward keeping of what they call the Christian 
sabbath ; which is no sabbath at all, but the blessed day of 
our dear friend, in which the best thing we can do is to be 
loving and generous, thankful and good-natured, cheerful and 
happy. 

Truth has its letter and its spirit. Dogmatists and bigots 
lay all stress on the letter. They pack it up in certain 
words ; they string it on articles ; they lock it up in a chest 
of drawers which they call a creed ; they worship it in the 
text of the Bible. They say, " If you do not believe it just 
as we express it, you shall, without doubt, be damned ever- 
lastingly." But truth cannot be kept in any forms : it is a 
conviction in the soul. You express it so to-day ; other- 
wise, to-morrow. 

Every doctrine has its letter and its spirit. The letter of 
a doctrine is its logical meaning, or that which the words 
literally imply. The spirit of a doctrine is that which is 
intended by those who hold it ; the deep conviction in their 
minds which they attempt to express thus, of which this is 
the outward symbol. For, as all language is imperfect, no 
verbal statement can ever adequately express the human 
thought. The best statement is only an approximation. A 
doctrine, therefore, may be false in its letter, but true in its 
spirit ; false in what it says, true in what it tries to say. 

Xo doubt, there was truth in this sense in all the great 
doctriues which have been held by large multitudes during 
long periods. The letter of the Trinity is false ; but the 
spirit of the Trinity seems to have been the desire to unite 
the different views of the Deity held by the Jew, the Greek, 
the philosopher, and the child. "While the Jew had seen the 
unity of God and his holiness in revelation, the Greek had 
seeu his wisdom and power in nature, and the philosopher had 



THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT. 



19 



found God also in the instincts of his soul. All these differ- 
ent convictions were felt to have some substantial reality, 
and the doctrine of the Trinity grew out of an attempt to 
unite them in a single statement. 

The attempt has not been successful ; but its spirit was 
sound, and, in some form or other, may yet be found also 
true in the letter. 

But we should do an equal injustice to Paganism, if we 
regarded only its letter, and forgot its spirit. The spirit of 
Paganism is that which the Apostle Paul described in his 
noble speech at Athens, when he told the Greeks that they 
already worshipped, though ignorantly, the true God. The 
spirit of Paganism is feeling after God in nature ; trying to 
find Him who is not far from any one of us ; having vague 
irrepressible longings after an infinite truth and beauty. 

Christian missionaries, who go to convert the heathen, are 
often moved by seeing the profound earnestness of their 
devotion. They feel that there is a substantial truth in all 
these religions in the midst of their formal errors. The poet 
Schiller has well expressed this truth in the play of " Wal- 
lenstein, ,, where Max speaks of the belief of the great duke 
in astrology : — 

" 0, never rudely will I blame his faith 
In the might of stars and angels. 'Tis not merely 
The human being's pride that peoples space 
With life and mystical predominance ; 
Since likewise for the stricken heart of love 
This visible nature and this common world 
Is all too narrow ; yea, a deeper import 
Lurks in the legend told my infant years 
Than lies upon that truth we live to learn." 

Mr. Coleridge was once a Unitarian, afterwards a Trinita- 
rian ; but he did ten times more for Liberal Christianity after 
he became a Trinitarian than he did before. He taught the 
Orthodox Church one great idea, which has penetrated it 



20 



THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT. 



through and through, — that truth is not a statement of 
opinion ; that faith is one thing, belief another ; and that no 
man is ever saved by a doctrine, but only by an insight. So 
that now it has become all but impossible for any Protestant 
teacher, however Orthodox, to believe that any one will be 
damned for disbelieving a creed. As long as truth was con- 
founded with belief, people could think so ; now they cannot. 
The whole system of Orthodoxy is saturated throughout by 
this doctrine. It is like the ice on the river in the spring. 
It is floating there still, a foot thick, and seems solid ice ; 
but it is water-soaked ; and, one morning, it will sink, and 
be all gone. For all men have now come to see, more or 
less distinctly, that truth has its letter and its spirit ; and 
that the letter kills, while the spirit alone gives life. 

So also with morality. It, too, has its letter and spirit. 
There is a logical morality, which says, " This is right, and 
that is wrong ; " but back of all that is the spirit, the motive, 
the aim, which makes a thing right or wrong. " Is it wrong 
to lie?" Certainly, we answer. "Is it wrong to commit 
sacrilege?" Surely. " Is it wrong to assassinate?" No 
doubt. " But I," says Jacobi, " am that atheist, that god- 
less person : yes, I am that wretch who would lie, as the 
dying Desdemona lied ; deceive as Pylades, when he pre- 
tended to be Orestes, that he might die in his stead ; commit 
sacrilege as David, when he ate the showbread ; be an assas- 
sin like Brutus, and a sabbath-breaker like the disciples, who 
plucked ears of corn because they were hungry, and because 
law was made for man, and not man for the law." 

The letter of morality kills : the spirit of morality, which 
is the love of right, the love of truth, an inward truthfulness 
of soul, a fidelity to one's own highest nature, an aspiration 
after whatever things are pure, and lovely, and noble, — this 
it is which fills the soul through and through, at once with 
magnanimity and humility, at once with courage and mod- 
esty ; makes us faithful without pedantry, and holy without 
cant and pretence. 



THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT. 21 

This, then, we say, is the chief difference between man 
and man. Some people, in whatever they do, follow dead 
routine ; others, a living law : some see only what is cus- 
tomary ; others see always what is needed : some are bound 
fast to what is usual and what is proper ; others are made 
free by the sight of what is beautiful and good. 

No man is a master in any work till he works according 
to the spirit. A man cannot be an able mechanic if he is a 
man of routine. The able mechanic is one whose mind is 
wide awake, and who is open to the incoming spirit of dis- 
covery ; who is hoping to do better than he has done. So 
he makes a high art of any work. Such men as Stephenson 
and Bramah, Fulton, Ericsson, and Xasmyth, were greater 
poets, and lived a more imaginative life, than the parrot 
poetasters who rhyme like Tupper or Dobell. The grimy 
workshop of these men is all transfigured with music, song, 
and ideal lyrics. 

Every occupation has those who follow it after the letter 
or after the spirit. The first do their best to kill their call- 
ing, and destroy all the respect that is felt for it in the minds 
of men: the other class elevate it, — give it dignity and 
worth. 

There is, for example, the physician after the letter, who 
follows blindly the traditions of his school, whatever it may 
happen to be. He degrades his profession, in the minds of 
men, by the way- in which he uses the terrible instruments 
in his hands ; until at last men say, " Our chance of recovery 
is better without the doctor than with him." Thus the letter 
of medicine has killed medicine. 

Then there is the pedantic scholar, who lives among dead 
words ; who studies languages, not for the sake of the great 
literatures to which they are the portals, but for their own 
sake. Languages, being taught so, at last lose all their in- 
terest for the human mind : and so young men study Latin 
and Greek for six or eight years, and end by not being able 



22 



THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT. 



to read a Greek or Latin book. The letter of scholarship 
has killed scholarship. Teachers, thus teaching after the 
letter, invariably destroy all interest in the subject which 
they teach. Meantime, the teacher who teaches with enthu- 
siasm, because he is interested in the substance and spirit of 
what he teaches, excites a like enthusiasm in the mind of 
the scholar. Everything thus learned is remembered ; and 
the whole subject, thus vitalized, is thoroughly and deeply 
known. 

During the last century, history was written according to 
the letter. Excellent, painstaking men collected all the facts, 
dates, and names belonging to a period, put them together, 
and called it all " history." It was only dead annals. Who 
took any interest in these histories ? Who cared for them ? 
The letter of history had killed it. Then came historians in 
France like Michelet and Thierry ; in England, like Carlyle 
and Macaulay ; in America, like Bancroft and Motley. Then 
the curtain was lifted from before the Past. It came up be- 
fore us with its tragedy and its tears. It was as when Eli- 
^phaz saw in his vision the spectral form : "In thoughts from 
the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men, fear 
came upon me, and trembling. Then a spirit passed before 
my face." W e saw men, like ourselves, on the stage where 
these great dramas were performed. We saw the wild, 
stormy promise of the French Revolution, and its pathetic 
end. We saw the poor King of France flying under the 
dewy night to Varennes. From earlier centuries came for- 
ward the living forms of stern Keltic chiefs and Druid 
priests ; of Norman sea-kings, cruel and terrible ; Cromwell 
and Hampden, earnest Puritan deliverers of English liberty. 
The spirit had once more returned into history, and it was 
again alive. 

We see by these varied examples the truth of the apostle's 
statement, that the letter kills. We should hardly have ven- 
tured so bold a statement. We might have said that the 



THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT. 23 

letter without the spirit was inadequate. We might perhaps 
have gone further, and declared it useless. But to call it 
positively pernicious ; to say that the letter of religion, of 
the Bible, of worship, hills religion, the Bible, and worship, 
we should scarcely have ventured to do that. It would have 
seemed a dangerous statement. But an insight and experi- 
ence like that of Paul enable one to say what would be 
thought dangerous by one standing on a lower platform. 
Now that he has said it, we also can see it. In everything, 
the letter kills, and the spirit makes alive. The mere letter 
of the Old Testament and the New Testament kills piety. 
The mere letter of morality kills goodness. The letter of 
our daily work kills our interest in life. Edmund Burke 
says, " There is an unremitted labor, when men exhaust 
their attention, burn out their candles, and are left in the 
dark." 

But when we are open to the spirit, and let that flow into 
all our work, thought, and life, then everything is once more 
vitalized ; then the Bible becomes a new book, full of intense 
interest ; nature is new, being full of God ; and man becomes 
a new creature, with a new heaven and a new earth. 



Ill 



PROPHETS WHO HAVE BEEN SINCE THE WORLD 
BEGAN. 

Luke i. 70 : " Prophets who have been since the world began." 
A PROPHET is not merely one who foresees, who 



JlJL. knows the future, who beholds events as they draw 
near ; he is this, and more. He is not merely one who 
rebukes a nation's sins. Prophets do that ; but that is not 
all they do. He is not merely one who teaches truth. The 
essential thing which makes him a prophet lies deeper than 
any of these partial definitions take us. A prophet is one 
who goes back of all traditions in religion to the original 
reality ; behind all creeds, to the primal insights out of 
which they grew ; beneath all expediency, to the creative 
law of justice and eternal right. This makes him a prophet ; 
this helps him to foresee ; this cliarges him full of noble 
indignation against all falsifiers of truth and betrayers of 
justice. Such men are naturally and necessarily the teach- 
ers of their race. They do not teach officially as a profes- 
sion, but from the need of utterance. He who sees, must 
say what he sees. " We also believe, and therefore speak." 

The prophetic element, therefore, is not necessarily any- 
thing miraculous or exceptional. The prophetic faculty is 
the natural, not the unnatural, condition of man. All men 
foresee and foretell in proportion as they have any manliness 
of soul and force of intellect. Half of the conversation of 
every day turns upon what is to happen to-morrow. Farm- 




(24) 



PROPHETS SINCE THE WORLD BEGAN. 



25 



ers ask each other what sort of weather it will be the com- 
ing week. Merchants inquire what will be the condition of 
the market three months hence. Brokers foretell the effect 
of such and such events on the money-market. Xo man 
lives who does not constantly look forward to foresee and to 
foretell what is to come. People often make mistakes ; but 
that does not prevent them from trying again ; for the in- 
stinct of the soul compels them to look forward. We may 
say, therefore, that prophecy is one of the natural faculties 
of the soul, just as much as reason or imagination. 

You think, perhaps, that I am confounding different 
things — natural sagacity, which foretells events by knowl- 
edge of the laws which produce them ; and spiritual foresight, 
born of inspiration, which foretells the events sent by God. 
But is there such a distinction? Are not all events sent by 
God? Our Saviour blames the Jews because they could 
not foresee the spiritual events about to come, when they 
could foresee the weather to-day or to-morrow. " He said 
to the people, When ye see a cloud rise out of the west, ye 
say, There cometh a shower ; and so it is. And when ye 
see the south wind blow, ye say, There will be heat ; and it 
cometh to pass. Ye hypocrites ! ye can discern the face of 
the sky and of the earth ; but how is it that ye do not dis- 
cern this time?" As though he had said, " The same saga- 
city which, applied to temporal things, enables you to fore- 
see earthly changes which are to come, if applied to spiritual 
things, would enable you to foresee spiritual events which 
are to come." 

Jesus called them "hypocrites," because they professed 
to be the religious leaders of their nation, and yet had no 
such perception of coming religious events as they had of 
every-day affairs. It was their business to foresee the com- 
ing of the Christ, and to notice the signs of his coming ; and 
they did not do it. This shows that they did not really care 
about it as they professed to care. Every one can foresee 



25 



PROPHETS WHO HAVE BEEN 



in his own department of thought in which he is really 
interested. Napoleon could foresee just what his enemy 
would do, because he was interested in the game of war. 
Before he left Paris for his last campaigD, which ended at 
Waterloo, he said, " Wellington lies with eighty thousand 
men in front of Brussels. Blucher lies with a hundred and 
twenty thousand Prussians on his left. These two armies 
are intended by their commanders to support each other, 
and their two wings to come together ; but they probably do 
not. Probably they have left a vacant space of four or live 
miles between them. I will throw my army into that space, 
and strike them separately, first one, then the other, before 
they can combine." He found it exactly so. And half of 
his success in war lay in this power of military prophecy, by 
which he could throw himself, in imagination, into the posi- 
tion of his enemies, and so foretell exactly w T hat they would 
do. Every man is thus a prophet in the things he cares for. 
Those who care most of all for religious truth, for the spir- 
itual progress of mankind, for the advance of a great moral 
cause, can foresee in that direction, and are prophets to 
other men. Jesus therefore blamed the Pharisees, and 
justly, for not being prophets in religion, when they could 
prophesy so easily in regard to common things. 

Therefore the Jewish prophets were not the first nor the 
last prophets in religion : there were prophets before them, 
so our text declares — ''prophets who have been since the 
world began." Not only all men, as we have said, have 
something of the prophetic element in them, but God has 
other prophets, mighty forelookers and foretellers, who have 
been since the world began. 

For example : Nature is " a prophet who has been since 
the world began." The facts of nature look forward to a 
result, as Avell as backward to. a cause. Nature contains 
both the law and the prophets — universal divine laws, yet 
these laws tending always to sure providential ends. 



SIXCE THE WORLD BEGAN. 



27 



I go in the spring to a seed-store, and I buy packages of 
flower-seeds. They come from Germany. I open a pack- 
age, and I find twelve little papers containing twelve varie- 
ties of some flower — asters, for example. There are a 
dozen little seeds in each paper. They look alike ; but I 
know, if I plant them apart, when they come up, each seed 
will produce its own flower, with its own color — white, or 
purple, or scarlet, as the case may be. Each little seed is a 
prophet, foretelling what is to come out of it. Each seed, 
bearing fruit after its kind, has, since the world began, 
been -a prophecy and promise to man, that, if the sowing 
does not fail in the spring, the harvest shall come in the 
autumn. 

Look at the human eye. Consider its wonderful forma- 
tion, its lenses adapted to refract light and bring it to a focus 
on the retina, yet without dispersing the ray. In the first 
human eye was a prophecy of all that the eye was to do, — 
a prediction and promise of sunlight, moonlight, twilight, — 
of all the forms of beauty and wonder which cover the earth. 
When God made the eye, he foretold light ; he predicted 
sun, moon, stars ; he announced the coming of beauty, 
grace, symmetry — every glory of sunrise, every magnifi- 
cence of evening. And when God made the human hand, 
he foretold in its construction all it was to do, all the human 
arts which were to come from its use. 

All nature is strewn with prophecies, had w T e but intelli- 
gence to read them. The very form of the continents, with 
their seas, mountains, plains, foretells the course of human 
affairs. Geography foretells history. The great level 
plains of Central Asia foretold the nomad tribes of herds- 
men and shepherds who were to wander over them. The 
great river-valley of the Xile foretold the civilization of 
Egypt. The indented coast of Greece foretold Hellenic 
culture. All nature looks forward to man, and foretells his 
coming and his destiny. 



28 



PROPHETS WHO HAVE BEEN 



So nature around us, and reason within us, have been 
prophets since the world began. Reason, allied to nature, 
foresees evermore. Great inventors and great discoverers 
have in them this element especially, because their reason 
is fed by the knowledge of nature. In the Book of Samuel, 
we read that he who was afterwards called a prophet, or 
foreteller, was originally called a seer — one who sees. 
Sight leads to foresight. He who sees well can easily fore- 
see. Every great invention and discovery is a prophecy. 
Columbus foresaw America long before he set sail for it. 
Fulton foresaw his steamboat, and beheld it in vision sailing 
up the Hudson, against wind and tide, before the keel was 
laid. All great moral reformers are supported by the spirit 
of prophecy in their breasts. They rest secure on the eter- 
nal laws of God's government, and know certainly that, 
because God reigns, the right must triumph. What would 
Luther have done, standing alone against all Christendom, 
attacking a church which had governed Europe for a thou- 
sand years ; which had its thousands of priests and bishops 
in all lands, before which kings and emperors trembled ; 
which held in its hand the knowledge, the wealth, the power 
of Europe, — how could he, a poor, lowly monk, venture on 
the audacity of attacking such an awful power, had not God 
in his heart given him to see that the eternal laws of truth 
and justice were on his side, and that, therefore, he must at 
last be conqueror ; whispering to his heart that his friends 

"Were exaltations, agonies, 
And love, and man's unconquerable mind"? 

All great souls who have done any noble work in the 
world have been supported by this divine power of prophecy 
within them. They have looked forward in hope, assured 
hope, to a future success, of which the present gave no 
signs. The true prophets of God have not been men of 
abstract thought or abstract piety ; but they have been the 



SINCE THE WORLD BEGAN. 



29 



real workers, the real moral and religious leaders and 
chiefs, who have lived by faith in a better future while 
doing the hard work of to-day. 

It is quite a mistake to suppose that the Jewish prophets 
were merely or essentially foretellers of the future, or writers 
of books : they were the great reformers of their time — 
men who lived in the midst of strife v The first, and perhaps 
grandest, of them all, after Moses, Samuel, was at once an 
heroic ruler and general, and a wise statesman. He was the 
first who brought order out of anarchy. Till this time, the 
whole land was torn with petty guerrilla warfare. Some 
such state of things prevailed as in Mexico now. A succes- 
sion of leaders had arisen ; but they brought no order out 
of chaos. The reason was, that they were mere fighters — 
captains, not prophets. " The word of the Lord," it is said, 
" was precious in these days : there was no open vision." 
The men of action were there, but not the men of deep 
religious thought, not the men of open vision. Then Sam- 
uel arose — a great statesman, a great commander, a great 
prophet, all in one ; an awful, majestic figure, who has 
come clown to us through all these intervening centuries, 
surrounded with a strange halo of mystery and grandeur. 
He first united the elements of action, moral conviction, and 
spiritual insight. He was the first of the long line of He- 
brew prophets ; all of whom, like him, were more men of 
action than of devotion. They fought against the evils of 
their hour — Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and greatest of them 
all, Elijah ; they rebuked kings and people, and stood up for 
justice and humanity in the midst of an evil generation. 
What gave them this power? Not the belief of a creed, not 
any traditional religion. No ; but the fresh and living sight 
of justice and truth with which God inspired their hearts. 
They saw the right : they did not merely believe in it. 
They saw God : they did not merely reason him out by a 
chain of argument. They were seer's, therefore they could 



30 



PROPHETS WHO HAVE BEEN 



be doers ; for no man can do any noble thing but the man 
who sees something nobler — even immortal and infinite 
truth. 

This leads me to another point. The lowest kind of 
prophecy is sagacity, based on observation of outward laws. 
It is thus that 

"Old experience doth attain 
To something of prophetic strain." 

But this is only the lower kind of prophecy. The higher 
and better prophecy comes not from the region of the under- 
standing, but from a deeper depth. The reason of man, 
indeed, as we have seen, has been a prophet since the world 
began. But God has had other, nobler, surer prophets of 
the future than the mere intellect. The conscience sees fur- 
ther than the understanding ; the heart is wiser than the 
head. These, also, have been God's prophets since the 
world began. 

Deep in the human breast, God has placed this solemn 
prophet, whom we name Conscience. He looks evermore 
at the eternal law of justice, deeper than any outward 
law : — 

"Which doth preserve the stars from wrong, 
And (by which) the most ancient heavens are fresh and strong." 

No man but hears its voice. It speaks to us of right that 
we ought to do, of wrong that we ought to resist. It fore- 
tells a judgment to come. It speaks of a sure retribution 
for all evil, some time or other, somewhere or other. It is 
the sword of Damocles, hanging over the head of Louis 
Xapoleon in the Tuileries. It scared Herod when he 
thought of John the Baptist. It makes the weakest man 
strong who is acting from conscience. It frightened the 
slaveholders, who held the whole power of the nation in 
their hands, — Presidents, Congress, the Democratic party at 



SINCE THE WORLD BEGAN. 



81 



the North, the whole bench of J udges, — and made them 
wish to hurry out of the Union, so as to escape the con- 
science of New England ; for they knew that this New 
England conscience was stronger than they all. In it they 
foresaw 

" The vanward cloud of evil days, 
With all their stored thunder, laboring up." 

For conscience always speaks as one having authority. By 
the voice of Joan of Arc, from her burning scaffold, calling 
on Jesus, it frightened the soldiers into hysterics. It com- 
pelled Governor Wise, looking on John Brown, to say that he 
was the bravest and most honest man he ever knew. From 
the prison of Jeremiah, its voice reached the ear of the King 
of Israel, and struck terror into his heart. From the cross 
of Christ, it seemed to darken the sky, and rend the graves, 
and raise the dead. It may be that truth is forever on the 
scaffold, and wrong forever on the throne ; but it is also true 
that truth on the scaffold not only sways the future, but 
awes and terrifies the seemingly triumphant present. Al- 
most before the ashes of Savonarola had been swept from 
the great square in Florence, Raffaelle was painting his 
serious face among the doctors of the Church in the frescoes 
of the Vatican.* 



* " At Rome, Raffaelle was the first who undertook his apotheosis 
by placing him among the most illustrious doctors of the Church in 
the dispute on the Holy Sacrament. Ten years had then elapsed 
since the death of Savonarola. Pope Julius II., who was worthy of 
appreciating such a genius, had succeeded Alexander Borgia on the 
pontifical throne ; and thus were terminated the scandals with which 
this infamous family had appalled Italy. The severe and despotic 
character of this pontiff will not allow us to suppose that Raffaelle 
would have ventured to place the portrait of Savonarola in one of the 
Stanze of the Vatican, unless the idea had been suggested to him by 
Julius himself, who, no doubt, preferred this kind of reparation, as 
affording the best guaranty for present publicity and future per- 
petuity." — Rio : Poetry of Christian Art. 



82 PROPHETS WHO HAVE BEEN 



The human heart, also, has been one of God's prophets 
since the world began. 

The heart, I just now said, has a deeper wisdom than the 
head. Its faith, its hope, and its love predict and assure a 
better future than the mere intellect can foresee. Every- 
thing that is greatly good in the world has been accom- 
plished by the power of faith, not resting on outward evi- 
dence, but on the inward evidence of the heart. How has 
Christianity triumphed? Not by its miracles. Our books 
teach us to believe in Christ because of his miracles ; but 
who really believes in Christ because of his miracles ? VTe 
believe in him because we love him. Love leads to knowl- 
edge. He 44 draws all men unto him." " His sheep hear 
his voice, and follow him." The head believes in God by 
means of argument : the heart sees him. " Blessed are the 
pure in heart ; for they shall see God." The intellect rea- 
sons about immortality : the heart knows it. The intellect 
proves Christianity to be true. The heart of man, in all 
ages, feels the truth of that generous faith which brings God 
near to us as a Father ; which reveals man as a brother ; 
which restrains the tyrant, and breaks the fetters of the 
slave ; which supports the head of the feeble and sick, and 
opens heaven to the dying eye. 

Is it all an illusion — this grand hope, born out of love ? 
Let us look at it. A desires a partner in business, and finds 
B. He exercises his best judgment in the selection ; he 
takes advice, and asks references, and inquires into his ante- 
cedents : yet B often turns out, after all, not the man he 
thought him to be. But as long as two friends love each 
other, their love is a sure foundation for mutual trust. Love 
does not deceive. Love, which beareth all things, believeth 
all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things, is the one 
thing which never faileth. Nothing is so solid as love. It 
sometimes seems to be the only substantial thing there is in 
the universe. Perhaps it is so ; for God is love, and God 



SINCE THE WORLD BEGAN. 



33 



alone has real self-existing being. "We live from him, as we 
receive his love into our souls. 

Therefore is love also a true prophet. It foresees and 
foretells a better future. It looks through the darkness of 
the present, — through pain, disappointment, trial, sorrow, 
bereavement, loneliness, — and sees all things working to- 
gether for good. The true optimism comes to us when we 
love. When we forget ourselves, and love others ; when we 
forget our selfishness, and share in God's interest in man- 
kind ; when we throw ourselves into life, and follow Christ 
in his trust in God, his hope for man, — then the heavens 
again smile. Then the day dawns peacefully, and the night 
closes serenely. Then we look through all anxiety, and see 
good beyond. Then, when we lay our beloved in the damp 
grave, we have a hope full of immortality in our hearts. 
Mortality is swallowed up of life. Our faith in God is faith 
in good. Let the heathen rage, let the rebels succeed, let 
tyranny seem to triumph, let our hearts be wrung with bit- 
terest disappointment and sorrow, we have within us a sure 
word of prophecy, to which we can continually resort till the 
day dawn and the day-star arise in our hearts. 

Such are some of the words which God speaks .to the 
human race by the mouth of his holy prophets who have 
been since the world began. Xot in Judsea alone, therefore, 
not in Palestine alone, are God's prophets found, but in all 
lands, and in all times, where the reason, the conscience, 
and the heart of man exist. These are always inspired to 
prophesy. The inspiration may be of a higher or a lower 
order ; from that of Balaam, the son of Beor, to that of 
Jesus of Xazareth. But differing in degree, it is one in 
nature : it is always the inspiration which flows from God 
into the soul which opens itself to him. 
3 



IV. 



STEPS OF BELIEF. 
John iv. 42: " Now we believe, xot because of thy sating; 

FOR WE HAVE HEARD HIM OURSELVES, AXE 4 KNOW THAT THIS IS 
INDEED THE CHRIST, THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD." 

THE woman went out of the city that morning one of the 
most forlorn creatures of earth. She was despised by 
her neighbors, and she knew that they had a right to despise 
her. She was living with a man who was not her husband : 
she had been false to others, or had been abandoned by 
them. Affection, pure affection, was dead in her heart. It 
was ulcerated by sin, remorse, and shame. She was bitter 
towards men, defiant towards God. She believed that men 
had been unjust to her; that God had not given her a fair 
chance. 

So she went out that morning from the ancient city of her 
fathers, situated in the beautiful and sequestered glen at the 
base of Gerizim. Above her head rose the great cliffs, 
whose gray rocks were half hidden in the masses of foliage, 
and whose purple shadows rested on the valley through which 
she passed. The blessings of Gerizim had passed her by : 
the curses of Ebal had fallen on her forlorn head. So she 
followed the foot-path, her water-urn on her head, till she 
saw before her the old stones surrounding the well of Jacob. 
On one of them a man was sitting ; and she knew him, by 
his dress, to be a Jew. 

One would think that two nations who differed from all 



STEPS OF BELIEF. 



35 



the world, and were despised by all the world, would stand 
by each other. One would think that races having the same 
blood, speaking almost the same language, having nearly the 
same sacred books, both followers of Closes, both worship- 
ping the same God, would have some sympathy for each 
other. But such is not human nature. TTe can pardon 
those who differ widely from us, — not those who almost 
agree with us. " Since they almost agree, why not quite? " 
we say. The Catholic king could not pardon the man whom 
he thought a Jansenist ; but when he found he was not that, 
but simply an atheist, not believing in any God at all, he 
gave him an office. 

Besides, the men or the race who are despised like to find 
something lower than themselves to despise in turn. The 
scorn of mankind fell on the Jew. He turned against the 
Samaritan with a still greater contempt. Juvenal, the 
Roman poet, tells us, in his sharp, stinging verse, what 
people in his time thought of Jews. " He is the son of a 
Jew," says he : u so the poor fellow has been taught to wor- 
ship clouds, and to consider it as bad to eat pork as to eat a 
man. He obeys what Moses has written in his mystical 
book, and makes the seventh day one of pure laziness. " 
And so a wiser man than Juvenal, Tacitus, says that the 
Jews i; nourish a sullen and inveterate hatred against man- 
kind ; their ceremonies are gloomy rites, full of absurd 
enthusiasm, — rueful, mean, and sordid." 

The Jews were thus thought by the Romans to be the 
lowest of mankind : they thought the Samaritans infinitely 
lower than themselves. The Samaritans despised and 
scorned the woman who went on that eventful morning, her 
heart full of rage and despair, to the sacred ancient well. 
There she saw a Jew. She went to the open mouth ; did 
not look at him as she lowered her urn into the deep well, 
and drew it up, ready to meet his contempt with cold indif- 
ference ; when he quietly asked her for water : ki Give me 
to drink." 



36 STEPS OP BELIEF. 

Then she turned, and looked at him. We know what she 
saw, — not the face which painters have made so familiar to 
us, the ideal of art ; not a face all gentleness and weak 
humility. No : Jesus never looked so. There beamed 
upon her from his eyes a light penetrating to the depth of 
her mind, — a light of calm insight, of generous good-will, 
of manly strength ; a look which contained in itself the 
promise of comfort, guidance, support, wherever it fell. 

I shall not go through this strange, magnetic, electric, 
soul-creating, and wonderful conversation with any para- 
phrase of mine. The woman went from her home that 
morning in despair : she went back full of new hopes. 
She had seen with her own eyes him, the long-expected, 
long-predicted one. He had read her inmost thought ; he 
had touched her most secret experience ; he had filled her 
heart with a faith in God and herself. " The man who has 
told me all things that ever I did — is not he the Christ ? " 

He who shows to us all we ever did, he who reveals to us 
our own heart, — he comes always in the name of Christ. 
Unless Jesus comes to us so, he has not really come to us at 
all. Until he shows us what we have done, shows us what 
our life really is, what we are before God and before the 
eternal laws of right and truth, we do not see him as the 
Christ, as our Master and King. AVe see him, perhaps, as 
Jesus of Nazareth, — a good man; a wonderful teacher, 
considering his circumstances and opportunities ; but nothing 
more : not as the Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour of the 
world. 

It is only love and insight which show us all we have ever 
done. Cold sagacity misjudges us : mere sympathy, feeble 
good-nature, soothes, but does not essentially help us. But 
love illuminated by truth, truth warmed through and through 
by love, — these perform for us the most blessed thing that 
one human being can do for another. They show us to our- 
selves : they show us what we really are, what we have 
been, may be, can be, shall be. 



STEPS OF BELIEF. 



37 



So the words of Jesus found the poor soul in her despair, 
and, not excusing her past folly and sin, showed her the 
noblest truth and good, — the living water of God, the pure 
worship of the Father, transcending all forms and ceremo- 
nies, uniting all sects, breaking down all partition walls ; 
lifting earth to heaven, and bringing down heaven to earth. 
We hear no more of her : she passes out of the history, 
never to return. But to-day and forever the wonderful and 
sublime words which Jesus spoke to her, the highest words 
ever uttered by man, the prophecy of a great future, are a 
part, and forever a part, of the story of this poor woman. 

I wish to. indicate here, from the words of the text, the 
five steps of belief through which we pass in our human ex- 
perience. The men of Samaria began by believing in Jesus 
in consequence of what the woman told them : they ended by 
believing in him in consequence of w T hat they themselves had 
seen. " Now we believe, not because of thy words ; for we 
have heard him ourselves, and believe that this is the Christ, 
the Saviour of the world." 

All our belief begins with the testimony of others. TTe 
first believe on testimony. God has made us to rely on the 
truthfulness of others. The little child believes everything 
which is said to him, and so learns fast ; because ninety- 
nine things of a hundred said to him are true. So 
nations and races take their belief from their ancestors. 
The man born in China believes in Confucius : if you had 
been born there, you would have believed in him. Every 
one born a Turk believes in Mohammed. Had you been 
born in Italy, you had been a Roman Catholic, to begin 
with. The vast majority of Trinitarians, Unitarians, Epis- 
copalians, Methodists, Quakers, are so because they were 
born so. Their parents were so before them. This is a 
good thing. We begin with a traditional belief, w T hich we 
accept without a doubt, and in which is always contained a 
great deal more truth than error. So we all learn some- 



38 



STEPS OF BELIEF. 



thing. God has graciously shielded little children from the 
wretchedness of doubt. But though childhood is good for 
children, it is not good for men. We must pass from tradi- 
tional belief to something beyond it. 

Now, the fault with many sects and churches is, that they 
try to make this traditional belief a permanent end. They 
try to fasten it, and rivet it, and to make any progress out 
of it impossible. The Roman Catholics do this openly and 
on principle. They make an idol of their traditions, and 
refuse to let themselves hear the other side of any question ; 
but, in doing this, they cease to believe in testimony, and 
believe with their will. This, then, is another way of be- 
lieving. The first method of belief is belief from testimony ; 
the second, belief from will. 

But, to a certain extent, God has made us to believe with 
our will ; and, to a certain extent, it is right to do so. That 
is, when we have seen a thing to be right, and true, and 
good, we ought to cling to it. That truth which, in our 
calm and sober hours, we have accepted, we ought not to let 
go, because, in hours of trial and darkness, we cannot see it. 
Cliug to it still, and you will see it again by and by. There 
is such a thing as loyalty to truth, which is noble. It is 
good to stand by the flag in the storm of battle, and when 
all around seems defeat and disaster. It is good to trust in 
God, in goodness, in eternal right, in the triumph of truth 
over evil, when we do not see how, or understand why. So, 
having believed from testimony, we may go on, and all per- 
sons do go on, and believe from will. All persons do and 
ou^ht to clino: for a while to their traditional belief, to the 
religion of their fathers, to the convictions of their people 
and land, and not be in any hurry to give them up. 

Still we cannot stay forever in this belief from will. 
After a while, the intellect claims its rights. We have to 
think about our belief, and examine it ; and then comes in 
the belief from reason, which is the third step. 



STEPS OF BELIEF. 



39 



Christianity is, no doubt, a reasonable religion. It 
encourages inquiry. It is not afraid of any amount of in- 
vestigation. There is no sort of harm, nor any danger, in 
the freest exercise of thought. To cry out against heresies, 
and to persecute heretics, is itself unbelief : it is being afraid 
that the truth cannot stand. Think as much as you will, in- 
quire as freely as you choose ; there is no sort of objection to 
this. It is our duty to examine and criticise and reflect ; for 
how otherwise can truth advance ? The church and world 
can never be one in faith except by free thought. By keeping 
where we are, we keep apart : by going forward, we may 
come together. So that it is right to believe* from reason, 
and to believe with a clear and active understanding. This 
is the third stage of belief. 

But these beliefs need to be all merged into another and 
higher belief ; that is, the belief from experience. We 
must say to Tradition, " Xow we believe ; not because of 
thy words ; but we have seen him ourselves, and know that 
this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world." Knowl- 
edge only comes through experience. Belief passes into 
knowledge when we live it. To live the truth we believe, 
is, therefore, the only way to be certain of it. It is 
always so. 

The certainty we have of our own existence, and of the 
reality of the outward world, came by experience. It is so 
long ago, that we have forgotten the process. But the 
infant, grazing with blind wonder on the world, reaching out 
its feeble hands to touch the sky, knows nothing certainly. 
His own being, and that of the world around, are confounded 
in one. But God puts into his heart an instinctive and irre- 
sistible activity ; and, in his incessant movements and play, 
— handling everything, touching everything, examining all 
things, — he is coming to a clear knowledge of the world 
about him. It is activity, born of desire, which makes us 
know everything. Knowledge is thus born of love, through 
experience. 



40 



STEPS OF BELIEF. 



I know those whom I love, and I know no one else. 
Those who love me. and no others, know me. Sharp, cold, 
criticising intellect knows nothing as it ought to know it. 
Its knowledge is empty ; it rings hollow ; it is as sounding 
brass and tinkling cymbal. 

You cannot know anything of nature and the world 
around you except by loving it. The naturalist is he who 
takes a joy in nature ; who is happy in roving, day by day, 
through the summer woods, or by the sounding sea ; who is 
not studying in order to become a great man. but because 
Nature herself is beautiful and dear to him. She haunts 
him, she attracts him, she fascinates him : he can never 
leave her. So, at last, every feature of her lovely face 
grows familiar, and he is full of knowledge, and always 
running over with it ; and you cannot speak to him in the 
street but he will tell you something about Xature you did 
not know before. 

And so we know men when we love them. Jesus knew 
the Samaritan woman because he loved her. He saw in her, 
beneath all her sin and shame, a heart still capable of true 
goodness, of pure worship, and sincere adoration. His 
sympathy brought him close to her soul ; and so he knew 
her as no one else did. 

It is not enough to know the outward facts of a man's 
life in order to know him. His actions are the smallest part 
of him. Beneath all his acts is the man himself, with his 
hope, his aim. his purpose, his conviction, his longing, his 
sin and remorse, his faith and struggle. This is the real 
man ; and you can never know him till you have begun to 
love him ; and then he lets you into his inward experience, 
and you know him well. So, too, we cannot know God till 
we love God. Jesus teaches us to know God by showing 
him to us as our Father and Friend. It is by coming to him 
day by day, and trusting in him, and leaning on his help, 
and believing in his providence, and conversing with him in 



STEPS OF BELIEF. 



41 



throbs and aspirations of prayer, that we come at last to 
be as certain of God's presence and love as of our own 
existence. 

And so we know Christ by loving him. When we take 
him as our Master, Friend, Saviour ; when we seek to obey 
his divine law, and help him in his present work in the 
world, — we come to know him. He who sympathizes with 
Christ in caring for the poor, the ignorant, the suffering, the 
sinful, and seeks to help Christ in this his great work, comes 
to know Christ. In looking for his poor, we find him ; in 
visiting his prisoners, we visit him ; in speaking words of 
truth and love to the sinful and weak, we find ourselves in 
secret intimacy and sympathy with our Master. We do not 
know Christ only by reading about his life and miracles, but 
by having him formed in our hearts, by making ourselves 
Christs to other souls, by letting his spirit act in and 
through us, and so leading others to him. 

And so, at last, we also know immortality. That ceases 
to be belief, and becomes knowledge. We begin by believ- 
ing in a future life on outward evidence : we end by know- 
ing it by instinctive conviction. We experience immortality 
every time that we live and act from an immortal motive. 
Whenever we go out of ourselves and our own self-interest, 
we are immortal : we have eternal life abiding in us. The 
more we live so, the more certain we are of our own immor- 
tality and that of others. " He who liveth and believeth in 
me shall never die," said Jesus. He did not see death : he 
could not see it any more than the sun can see a shadow. 
All high, generous motive obliterates death from the pure 
vision. It is not our duty to think of death : our duty is to 
think of life. We are to live as though there were no such 
thing in the world as death, either for ourselves or others. 
Think of God, of Christ, of duty, of immortality, of love, 
and you shall realize the truth of the saying of Jesus, " I 
am the resurrection and the life. He that liveth and be- 
lieveth in me shall never die." 



42 



STEPS OF BELIEF. 



So, ray friends, it is our privilege and duty to pass on from 
the belief of testimony, in which we are born and nursed, to 
the belief of experience and personal conviction. Step by 
step, life leads us on, and deepens every conviction, changing 
opinion into knowledge. Doubts and fears vanish one by 
one ; uncertainty and scepticism pass away. So the storm of 
yesterday, which darkened all the sky with a triple canopy 
of clouds, and threatened us with a rainy Sunday, has gone 
by, and left a serene, cloudless heaven. And so, too, shall 
this awful hurricane of war, which has burst upon our 
land, also pass by, 'leaving us a clearer atmosphere than 
before, and a purer air to breathe ; leaving us righteousness 
in the place of iniquity ; true peace instead of a false one ; 
real union instead of hollow compromises ; in place of a na- 
tion hampered and fettered by evil institutions, a great and 
noble Christian republic, with its face lifted to the future, 
and the rising sun of coming centuries of human progress 
glowing around its brow as an immortal halo of glory. 



THE THORX IN THE FLESH. 



2 Cor. xii. 7 : " There was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the 

MESSENGER OF SaTAX, TO BUFFET ME, LEST I SHOULD BE EXALTED 
ABOVE MEASURE." 

XTTHAT this "thorn in the flesh" was, no one knows. 

* f There has been no end to conjecture ; but it leads to 
nothing. All we know is, that something in his soul, which 
he compares to a thorn sticking in the flesh, pained him and 
weakened him. Like a thorn in the flesh, it was a foreign 
substance introduced into his soul and life. Like a thorn in 
the flesh, it often gave him intense pain. Like a thorn in the 
flesh, it disabled him, in some way or at some times, from 
doing his work. Thus much we know : also we know that 
he earnestly prayed three times, but without any success, 
hoping to get rid of his trouble ; and that he found, at last, 
that the trouble was good ; that, when humbled, he was ex- 
alted, when weak strong, according to the everlasting Chris- 
tian paradox. From all this we may learn some useful 
lessons. 

For, first, we all have something which goes with us, stays 
by us, hides itself away in our soul, and which is like a thorn 
in the flesh. It is a foreign substance ; something unnatural, 
by no means a part of our true lives. It is something which 
opposes our best progress, interferes with our sincerest efforts 
to do right ; a messenger of Satan, therefore ; and yet it is 
somehow sent by God, — ; 4 given us" says the text; and 
which God finds to be for .our good, and refuses to take 

(43) 



44 THE THORN IN THE FLESH. 

away. It is something which makes us weak, yet strong 
in our weakness ; which humbles us, yet gives the very 
humility we want in order to rise. 

Let us consider some of these thorns. 

Sickness is a thorn. Some fine brain, like Pascal's, or 
Robert Hall's, or Buckminster's, has a fibre which makes 
discord ; and the whole economy of thought stands still. 
Some spirit ready to devote itself to great duties, a young 
man just entering the ministry of Christ, a noble woman like 
Mrs. Browning, an inspired teacher of the race like Dr. 
Channing, a child of genius like Mozart or RafFaelle, from 
the weakness of an ill-assorted body, die at the beginning of 
their work, or are, hampered and checked all the way through 
by the poor body. The sweet bells of their soul make no 
adequate music, but are jangled, out of tune, and harsh ; or 
else they fall iuto silence just as the awakened world listens 
for their wide-rolling melodies. A son longing to support 
his widowed mother, a daughter perfectly trained in intel- 
lect and heart to help and bless those who need her care, 
is smitten into palsied helplessness by some inexorable dis- 
ease. " How mysterious the Providence/' w r e say, u that 
these should be thus arrested ! while some hard, tyrannical 
husband, some stolid, selfish worldling, some reckless spend- 
thrift and swindler, says, c What's the use of anybody's being 
sick ? I never knew a sick day in my life.' " The man who 
uses his health as a despot is healthy : the man who would 
use it for boundless service to his race has it not. Legree's 
nerves, muscles, and sinews are all perfect ; but the angelic 
Eva fades before the moth. So that this pathetic minor 
crosses our ears in all the world's music : this is the sad 
refrain of all our poetry, singing evermore, — 

" She was of this world, where the things most sweet 
Pass soonest away ; 
And Rose met the^fate which other roses meet, — 
To bloom for a day." 



THE THORN IN THE FLESH. 



45 



Another thorn in the flesh is the unexpressed soul. It is 
homeliness, awkwardness, inability to express one's self easily 
and adequately. How many poor souls, full of noble senti- 
ments and ideas, are hemmed in and shut up by these bar- 
riers ! They sit like the prince in the " Arabian Nights," 
with half his body black marble. Young people feel this 
thorn very keenly. They cannot pass for what they are 
worth, they cannot have what they have a right to have, just 
because the cruel step-dame, Nature, has not loosened their 
tongue, — has put on them a strait-jacket of mauvaise honte, 
— has given them a poor, homely face or figure. It is a 
perpetual thorn in the flesh, and a barrier to their usefulness. 
The beautiful soul is put into the homely body, and sees some 
very commonplace soul dwelling hard by in a lovely, all- 
attracting form. From these lips, the magic of grace makes 
the silliest sophism charming : in those, the repelling aus- 
terity of manner deprives the purest truth of its power. 

Then there is another thorn, worse than this, — the black 
drop of blood which has got mingled in our circulation from 
some alien source. Inherited depravity, the sin of the parent 
visited upon the child by some mysterious but inevitable law 
of descent, makes us struggle, all our lives through, against 
a messenger of Satan in our own bosom. If Satan could 
send his angel into the soul of Paul, and Paul could not get 
rid of him, we need not wonder that these angels of darkness 
come to buffet us. These thorns stick fast in the fibres of 
the mind and heart. Pity those who thus suffer, — pity, and 
do not blame. Perhaps you meet every day an overbearing, 
dogmatical person, who, you are sure, is perfectly satisfied 
with himself, and who despises every one else. You feel 
yourself justified in despising him. But this very man is 
perfectly conscious of his faults. He struggles against them ; 
he hates himself for them. Though bearing so brave a face 
outwardly, he is inwardly dissatisfied with himself as much 
as you are with him. Pity him, therefore. And here is one 



45 



THE THORN IN THE FLESH. 



who is sharp, cynical, bitter, critical, fault-finding. It is in 
his blood to be so. He finds fault all day with himself for 
being so. Cannot we try to pity him, instead of hating him ? 
And here is a fretful person, or a morose person, or a grum- 
bling person. You cannot avoid him more than he would 
like to avoid himself. What faults of temper are sticking in 
us like thorns ! What habits of thought, of feeling, of speech, 
for which we abhor ourselves the moment we have spoken 
the sharp word, done the hasty act, indulged the unworthy 
desire ! How we cry to God to help us out of this misery ! 
and cry, as it seems, in vain. 

" Where Sin's red dragons lie in caverns deep,. 
And glare with stony eyes that never sleep,. 
And o'er the heavenly fruit strict ward do keep r — 

"There our poor hearts, long struggling to get free,. 
Torn by the strife, in painful agony 
Cry out, ; 0 God, my God, deliver me!'" 

Sometimes the thorn seems to be, not in ourselves, but in 
our circumstances. How happy we might have been, how 
good we might have been, but for this unfortunate lot ! Pov- 
erty is the weight which rests on some lives. They feel that 
their best powers are wasted in a mere struggle for existence. 
They have no leisure for improvement, — no time for thought, 
for good society, for hopeful and humane endeavor. Poverty 
is the angel of Satan sent to buffet them. They grow bitter 
against their condition, they rebel against the hardship of 
their lot. Or else there is a disappointed hope, a chamber 
of the heart closed and barred, and left without a tenant. O, 
if that dear child had lived ; if that friend had not gone, 
whose soul lifted ours into another world, — how different 
we should have been ! We hug our bereavement, with bit- 
ter determination not to be comforted. We press the thorn 
into our heart. There is a happy street for us in the world 
above, where we may* meet our lost friend again; but no 
happy street shall we ever find here. 



THE THORN IN THE FLESH. 



47 



What deeper thorn in the heart than the sense of an irrep- 
arable loss ? But within these two years we have seen the 
best blood of the land, the purest and noblest children born 
in our Northern homes, go out to die, with their fathers' 
blessing and their mothers' kiss. These children, for whose 
coming God prepared this fair land, that they might open 
their infant eyes on the beauty of its hills and valleys, its 
lakes and forests ; for whose childhood, past generations of 
thinkers, from Plato and Aristotle down to Pestalozzi and 
Horace Mann, have been providing methods of education, — 
these young men, purified in the calm atmosphere of virtuous 
homes, developed by the training and discipline of schools, of 
study, of books, of travel, the costly fruit of the latest century 
and the most advanced race, go to die in a field of unavailing 
slaughter. Well, I visit their mothers or sisters, their fathers 
or brothers, when the fatal news arrives. I go with fear, 
dreading to meet such a great and hopeless anguish. I find 
heaven there. I find the peace of God in their souls. It is 
the happiest place in the city to go to. I cannot bear to leave 
such a divine atmosphere. I go to carry sympathy, and per- 
haps words of comfort : but I receive instead inspiration, and 
the influences of angelic joy. Together with the deep sense 
of bereavement, the thorn penetrating the depth of the soul, 
the lethal arrow not to be taken from the heart while the 
heart beats, there is this strange serenity, sent down direct 
from God. And the boy, falling on the battle-field, renews 
all the tales of Greek and Roman heroism. We can burn our 
u Plutarch." We do not need to read hereafter the stories 
of Themistocles, of Aristides, or Leonidas. These Boston 
children, your brothers and sons, are to be spoken of in his- 
tory forever, and are to be the illuminating lights of the 
coming age. This is the thorn in the flesh, — deep as death, 
but changing into the most divine beauty and life for all 
time. 

The old painters delighted in taking for their subject the 



48 



THE THORN IN THE FLESH. 



martyrdom of St. Sebastian ; perhaps because it gave them 
an opportunity of painting a beautiful, manly figure, who in 
Christian art corresponds to the Antinous in Greek sculp- 
ture ; but also, I think, because it gave them the occasion to 
attempt that high problem of artistic genius, — the represen- 
tation of outward suffering passing into a deep inward peace 
and joy. This youthful form, all aglow with life and health, 
with no saintly emaciation, is bound to a tree, and pierced 
with arrows, with crimson blood oozing from the wounds ; 
but the face is radiant with celestial joy, to which the suffer- 
ing gives relief. So on a summer day, a dark background 
of shadowy hills, with a purple thunder-storm passing behind, 
relieves and enhances the sunny glory and beauty of the 
nearer valleys, waving in green luxuriance beneath the blue 
sky. So the thorn in the flesh becomes the test and sign of 
the highest life. 

But perhaps the worst of these thorns of circumstance are 
to be found in the ill-assorted home, where the sweetest ties 
of life become fetters and manacles ; the daily cup of bless- 
ing becoming a cup of poison, from mutual misunderstand- 
ing, or want of adaptation. In a true home, hearts tend to 
each other in confidence, by a natural attraction, as the pen- 
dulum to its centre. The soul expands into fullest develop- 
ment in that genial atmosphere. I think the home shows 
itself a true one as it takes off restraint from the soul, and 
removes reserves, while preserving tender thoughtfulness and 
mutual deference. Love teaches respect without reserve. 
This is its formula. In the world, and in most places, we 
are like glaciers, half thawed only, our thought flowing at 
the rate of a foot a day, — a little brook of utterance drip- 
ping from beneath the superincumbent frozen mass. But, in 
the true home, this glacier is melted in the summer influence 
of love and confidence, and flows down into a lovely river ; 
every sharp, self-possessed particle turning into a liquid drop 
of perfect adaptation. This is the joy of society, — entire 



THE THORN IN THE FLESH. 



49 



freedom, born of entire confidence in one another. But how 
often does it happen otherwise ! The soul, fluent abroad, 
freezes at home. There is no confidence between parents 
and children. The father thinks it his duty to be stern and 
uusympathizing : the sons carry elsewhere their confidence. 
Brothers and sisters are ignorant of each other's interests. 
The husband is a tyrant, the w^ife a slave. He, possibly, 
is a genteel, courteous tyrant ; she, doubtless, a luxuriously- 
cared-for slave. Or he is intemperate, and a brute; she, a 
patient angel, working herself into her grave to support the 
children w T hom he neglects. Or perhaps it is the reverse, — 
he patiently toiling to support the home, and she idly wast- 
ing in careless dissipation the fruits of his labor. This is the 
deepest thorn in the flesh ; this " the objection " (as Jeremy 
Taylor says) " which lies in one's bosom." 

What soul is there that does not have its thorn ? What 
heart that does not know its own bitterness ? What society, 
however graceful, beautiful, where conversation flows in bril- 
liant sweeping floods of eloquence, or flashes in ripples and 
waterfalls, or moves calm and serene, — 

" A river of thought, that, with delight, 
Divides the plain," — 

that has not its jealousies, its ennui, its weary sense of empti- 
ness, and often envies the day-laborer his healthy work? 
What dark, locked-up chambers of mystery are in every 
household, every heart ! But these implacable demons, sent, 
as it seems, from hell below to torture us, turn to smiling 
angels when we cast our care on God, and surrender our 
will to his will. They purify the soul ; they deepen it ; they 
make life more serious, earnest, joyful. 

We find, by our text, that there are some limitations to the 
effectual, fervent prayer of the righteous man. Prayer avails 
much, but does not remove these thorns. Three times Paul 
besought the Lord to remove his, not because of its anguish, 
4 



50 



THE THORN IN THE FLESH. 



but because it deprived him of power to do his work ; but 
God said to his soul, " No." It was revealed to him that he 
needed this thorn to humble him, and to make him leau more 
wholly on God's truth and love. u My strength is made 
perfect in thy weakness." The strong, determined energy 
of the apostle would have become arrogant self-reliance but 
for this thorn. Its sting cast him more wholly on God. 

And so it may always be with us. If you have any trial 
which seems intolerable, pray, — pray that it be relieved or 
changed. There is no harm in that. We may pray for any- 
thing, not wrong in itself, with perfect freedom, if we do not 
pray selfishly. One disabled from duty by sickness may pray 
for health, that he may do his work ; or one hemmed in by 
internal impediments may pray for utterance, that he may 
serve better the truth and the right. Or, if we have a be-* 
setting sin, we may pray to be delivered from it, in order to 
serve God and man, and not be ourselves Satans to mislead 
and destroy. But the answer to the prayer may be, as it 
was to Paul, not the removal of the thorn, but, instead, a 
growing insight into its meaning and value. The voice of 
God in our soul may show us, as we look up to him, that his 
strength is enough to enable us to bear it. 

The sickness may be not to death, but to life. We, in our 
sickness, may do more than in our health. Our poverty, 
which seems such a manacle, may unite us in deeper sym- 
pathy with our race, and throw us more wholly on God. 
The rich man is tempted to lean on his mortgages and 
stocks : but the poor man is induced to lean daily on God 
for daily bread ; and, as it comes day by day, his trust 
grows cheerful and confident. The man who trusts in his 
investments is frightened with every financial panic : the 
man who trusts in God is always brave. And so it often 
happens, that the man of millions, unless he keeps up his 
courage by giving away freely, is afraid of poverty ; but the 
man who has nothing but God is afraid of nothing, and so 
possesses all things. 



THE THORN IN THE FLESH. 



51 



We pray against our besetting sin. But God may answer 
this prayer, not by remoying the temptation, but by giving 
us more confidence in him, more sense of his pardoning love 
in Christ, more of a sentiment of steadfast reliance, more of 
habitual living with God. Instead of removing the tempta- 
tion, he comes and dwells with us. God and Christ make 
their abode by our side. u 3Iost gladly, therefore, we glory 
in our infirmities, that the peace of Christ may rest upon 
us. God does not take away the Red Sea, nor the wilder- 
ness, nor Jordan, but goes with us through them all, — a 
cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night. Xothing brings us 
so near to God as the sense of our spiritual and moral needs. 

According to one theory of life, the true progress of man 
consists in removing all obstacles, making all conditions 
harmonious, all work attractive, all relations agreeable and 
suitable. Following out this theory, we strive to break away 
from all inharmonious relations. But the poor Irish woman, 
who clings to her brutal, drunken husband, and says, " He 
was good, ma'am, once, and he's my husband," can teach 
these philosophers a lesson. I do not say that she is right, 
or that they are wrong ; but I do say, that true human prog- 
ress often consists rather in taking the good of our position, 
and bearing its evils, than in breaking away from inharmoni- 
ous relations. The world advances through shadow as well 
as through sunshine. The heart grows great and noble by 
manfully meeting and bearing the great trials of life. When 
we are weak, then we are strong. 

This nation of ours, amid all its prosperity, has had its 
thorn in the flesh. The institution of negro slavery in the 
United States has been the one thorn in our destiny, the one 
difficulty of our situation. All good men have sought for 
years, and prayed, that this thorn might be removed. We 
have tried to get rid of it by colonization, by emancipation, 
by debate, and all varied efforts, — in vain. God has left 
this thorn in the flesh of the nation to sting it into humility, 



52 



THE THORN IN THE FLESH. 



and reliance on him ; and now it has humbled us indeed. It 
has destroyed for a time our Union, taken away our pros- 
perity, involved the present in doubts and the future in dark- 
ness, and caused all Europe to shake its head at us in 
derision. 'But this humiliation the country needed ; and 
this thorn is allowed to remain, till we learn to lean on God 
and truth, on justice and humanity, not on our own strength, 
energy, wealth, and abundant power. Nothing else, perhaps, 
could have taken out of the national mind that egregious van- 
ity and self-esteem which was growing more colossal every 
year. We seemed to suppose that it was our own energy 
and ability which had prepared for us the continent. We 
took credit to ourselves for the richness of our land, the ex- 
tent of our soil, the treasures of minerals and vegetables 
which we possessed. We felt a little proud because our 
rivers were so long, and our States so large. As for our 
prosperity, we attributed it wholly to our own enterprise and 
talent. No wonder that the Old World listened to us with 
some disgust ; and so now, in our trial, we do not obtain its 
whole sympathy. It might have had sympathy with our 
cause, if not with us. But better for us, perhaps, to learn to 
stand alone, and fight our own way back to union and peace. 

" Leaves fall; but, lo, the young buds peep! 
Flowers die ; but still their seed shall bloom. 
From death the quick young life will leap, 
Now Spring has come to touch the tomb. 
The splendid shiver of brave blood 
Is thrilling through our country now ; 
And she, who in old times withstood 
The tyrant, lifts again her brow. 
God's precious charge we sternly keep 
Unto the final victory : 
With freedom we will live, or sleep 
With our great dead who set us free. 
God forget us, when we forget 
To keep the old flag flying yet ! " 



VI 



FAITHFUL OYER A FEW THINGS. 
Matt. xxv. 21: " Faithful over a few things." 

IT is a peculiarity of Christianity to lay stress on little 
things. It cares more for quality than for quantity. 
One man " may bestow all his goods to feed the poor ; " and 
yet the gospel shall pronounce him devoid of love to his 
neighbor, and of less account than the poor widow who puts 
her two mites into the treasury of God. It is not, " How 
much have you done?" but, "In what spirit have you 
acted?" not, "How long?" but "How well?" 

Every man's life has a law which governs it. All that he 
does unconsciously, he does according to that law. Is his 
ruling motive ambition, pleasure, conscience, love of truth, 
love of God ? Then that ruling motive colors every act ; 
and every word he utters in his most careless hours partakes 
of that general determination. And therefore for every idle 
word shall he give an account, because his idle words are all 
polarized by the central magnetism which governs his soul. 
In the English marine, it is said, there is a thread of scarlet 
which is woven into all the cordage, from the largest cable 
to the smallest line. It is the mark of government property. 
So a line of red runs through all of our thoughts, worlds, 
feelings, and actions. It is the stamp of our character upon 
each one of them. So Shakspeare never introduces on the 
stage a character that is not qualified by an individuality. 

(53) 



54 



FAITHFUL OVER A FEW THINGS. 



If he speaks a second time in the play, you may know that 
it is the same person who spoke before. 

If there is such a law of unity pervading our lives, some 
of us are not very well aware of it. We think that we can 
act one way in small things, another way in great ones : that 
in small matters we are not under law, but that in great 
things we are. So we come to despise or to neglect small 
matters. We trifle with truth in little things, with honesty 
in little things, with the law of reverence or of love in little 
things. 

But what is the meaning of the word "integrity"? It 
means thoroughness, entireness ; putting the same quality 
of soul into everything, great and small. No one is a man 
of integrity who does not do every thing with the same un- 
deviating honesty, the same unbending principle. The man 
of real integrity puts the whole energy of conscience, faith, 
love, into the smallest act as into the greatest. So the 
steam-engine in a factory exerts the same tremendous power 
to cut in two an iron bar, or to stick a pin into a card. 

Christianity does not allow us to trifle with anything. 
There is nothing trivial to the illuminated eye and heart of 
faith. He who says to his brother, " Thou fool ! 99 is in 
danger of hell-fire. He is, in fact, already in hell-fire ; for 
the feeling of contempt for his brother, the scorn and disdain 
which can thus reject from its sympathy a fellow-man, is 
itself the spirit of the pit. 

" He who hateth his brother, " says the apostle, "is a 
murderer." His hate may vent itself in no deadly act, in 
no word of injury : but the hatred in the heart is murder- 
ous ; it is tending that way. It is the arc of the curve, the 
return of which is deadly. 

A similar error leads us often to say, " How much good I 
would do with my money, if I were as rich as this man or 
the other ! " How much good do you do now with what 
you have? "O! if I had only time, what would I not 



FAITHFUL OVER A FEW THINGS. 



55 



learn and do ! " says another. How do you spend the time 
you have ? If you do not spend well the small time you 
have to spend, the little money you have to use, why do 
you think you would do better w T ith more ? The astronomer 
turns his glass to the heavens, and fixes three little points of 
the comet's course, and so finds a small arc of its curve. 
From that arc he can predict the whole. And so there may 
be an angel looking down this moment on you and me, see- 
ing what we have done yesterday, the day before yesterday, 
and to-day ; and from these three positions of our soul, he may 
infer the path in which we are moving, — inward towards 
the sun of life and light, or outward into darkness, coldness, 
and death. 

Here is a man who is a petty tyrant. He bullies the 
weak, he dictates to the submissive. If he is a coarse and 
ignorant man, he beats his w T ife ; if he is a refined and edu- 
cated man, he civilly and politely tyrannizes over her. If 
he is a master, he is harsh to his dependants ; if a lawyer, 
he badgers the witnesses, particularly if they are women and 
children. Now, because this man happens to live in a free 
State, is he any the less a slaveholder? Because he has no 
opportunity to torment whole communities, is he any the less 
a Xero ? Here is another man, who cannot bear to be con- 
tradicted in argument, and gets angry with his opponent 
w T hen he cannot convince him. In him dwells the spirit of 
a Dominic or a Torquemada. Give him the power, and he 
would straightway put on the rack a man who differed from 
him. Here is another, who indulges his appetites, his pas- 
sions, his desires, a little way, and then stops short of de- 
bauchery and intemperance, because he is afraid of the 
consequences. In his heart he is nevertheless guilty of the 
acts which his hand may never perform. 

I once heard of a colored preacher, who used this plain but 
striking image in a sermon : " You think, my brethren, that 
you can go a little way out of God's road into the devil's 



56 



FAITHFUL OYER A FEW THINGS. 



field, and not be caught, provided you do not go too far. 
But the devil is not such a fool, when he spreads his nets 
and sets his traps for you, to put them away in the middle 
of his field. No : he puts them close to the road : so, if you 
mean to go a great way or only a little way, he is sure to 
have you in either case/' The illustration was homely ; but 
the doctrine is sound. 

Perhaps we can best see how the moral difference between 
men consists in a quality of conviction and purpose, running 
into all they do, by comparing together different persons in 
the same walk or pursuit. 

I can conceive that there may be two men, equally active, 
laborious, and eminent in the same profession or trade ; and 
one shall be doing a great work by his occupation, while the 
other shall be really doing very little. I may illustrate this 
by describing two lawyers, two physicians, two merchants, 
and two clergymen. 

There are two lawyers, Counsellor A. and Counsellor B. 
Counsellor A. studied law, believing human law to be 
founded on divine law ; to be an attempt to organize justice, 
truth, and right, in human institutions. He considers it his 
business as a lawyer to protect the weak, to restrain the 
injustice of the powerful, to search out the truth in intricate 
and dark cases, so that the innocent may be proved inno- 
cent, and the guilty punished. He trains his intellect to be 
acute, penetrating, comprehensive, and full of resource, in 
order to hunt the flying footsteps of truth, and pour light 
into the tangled maze of error and sophistry. With the 
authority of insight, he makes peace between litigants, by 
showing each where he is in error ; and he stands among 
men as a judge, though he may not have the title or the 
office. He does a great work for society ; and, when he 
dies, Justice and Truth weep over his grave ; -for, with him, 
God's law always reigned supreme. 

Meantime Counsellor B. is a different sort of a man. He 



FAITHFUL OVER A FEW THINGS. 



57 



is a great lawyer too. He entered his profession to make 
money, to get influence, to acquire reputation ; and he has 
got them all three. He regards all laws as equally arbitrary 
and accidental, resting on no basis of absolute justice ; and 
therefore all, good or bad, to be equally deserving of respect. 
His business, as a lawyer, is to get his case. He will use 
any argument by which any juryman can be persuaded. If 
he cannot convince, he will confuse ; if he cannot prove, he 
will puzzle ; if he has no arguments, he has plenty of soph- 
isms. He is a great orb, raying out darkness. Such a man 
may work very hard all his life, and yet die at last, having 
done no real work for mankind. 

Then there are two physicians, Dr. C. and Dr. D. Dr. C. 
feels a strong sympathy for human suffering, and a desire 
to alleviate it. He believes that it is God who has given 
wonderful healing properties to plants and minerals ; and he 
studies patiently and carefully symptoms and remedies. 
Every case is sacred to him. The sickness of the beggar 
has his attention, like that of the prince. He is humble 
enough and w T ise enough to admit that he does not know 
everything. He confesses his ignorance, and is ready to 
receive light. He does not go blindly and dogmatically 
according to his theory, but patiently interrogates Nature, 
and sits at her feet waiting. He also asks God's blessing 
on all that he undertakes, and enters his patient's chamber 
with prayer. What a great work does not such a man do 
in the world ! He carries health of mind as well as of body 
to a thousand homes ; and to such a one we may apply the 
words of the poet, — 

" I have lain on the sick man's bed, 
Watching for hours for the leech's tread, 
As if I deemed that his presence alone 
Had power to bid my pain begone ; 
I have listed his words of comfort given, 
As if to oracles from heaven ; 
I have counted his steps from my chamber-door, 
And blest them when they were heard no more." 



58 



FAITHFUL OVER A FEW THINGS. 



But Dr. D. is of another school. He is a pedant, and 
prescribes according to some little theory. He is conceited 
and vain, — vain of his own science, vain of his profession 
and clique. Very bitter is he against innovators and inter- 
lopers. He had rather a man should die under the regular 
practice than get well by an irregularity. He has no awe, 
no fear, no great sense of responsibility, no tender human 
love. He is not living to be useful, but living to be success- 
ful ; and his work is not really work, — it is idleness. 

And here are two merchants, Mr. E. and F. The first 
regards commerce as a great means of civilization. The 
ship which carries goods carries ideas ; and the minds of na- 
tions are woven together by the winged shuttles which cross 
and recross the resounding ocean. He enlarges trade by an 
infusion of generosity and magnanimity. His ships go as 
missionaries ; his sailors are treated as men. Such large 
and generous views elevate a trade to the dignity of a mis- 
sion ; and the princely-minded merchant does a great work 
in the world, even though his means be small. 

But Mr. F. I shall not describe, because it is not neces- 
sary. There are in business too many men who merely ask 
how they can make money, not how they can do good by 
their business. We know the result of this, — how mind 
and heart are narrowed, and how the great business may 
turn out at last a mere waste of life. 

What more blessed work than that of a good clergyman? 
— one who is modest but manly, whose heart is in his work, 
whose life is given to making men happier and better. He 
sees all sides of life. He is welcome in the homes of the 
rich and the poor, the intelligent and the ignorant. He goes 
from the wedding to the funeral, from the gay dinner-party to 
the bedside of the dying. To him men bring their confidences : 
he sees human nature from the inside as well as the outside. 
Men of the world think they understand human nature be- 
cause they know men in their business hours, — because 



FAITHFUL OYER A FEW THINGS. 



59 



they know them in the street and shop, in the court-room 
and on 'change. But in these places they see just so much 
of them as the fencer or boxer sees of his opponent. Men 
meet each other there armed for battle. We see the fighting- 
side of men at such times. But the minister, if he is a man 
of sense, no pedant, nor made morbid by a gloomy theology ; 
if he is a man in whom others place confidence as sincere 
and conscientious, — has opportunities of knowing and help- 
ing men which few others can obtain. He has enough to do, 
enough to learn, enough opportunity for loving and being 
loved. What more does he want here or anywhere? 

But a clergyman who is ambitious for success outside of 
his work ; who is aiming at worldly position or literary re- 
nown ; who loves pleasure or ease ; who is narrow in his 
views ; is a bigot or a partisan, — such a one may do more 
harm than good. He loves his creed more than truth, he 
loves his sect more than Christianity, and himself most of 
all. If the interests of his church are identified with some 
abuse, then he comes at last to apologize for or defend the 
abuse. Thus we have seen, in our day, the example of 
Christian ministers, servants of him who came to break 
every yoke and let the oppressed go free, defending slavery, 
and opposing the roused conscience and heart of mankind 
with arguments drawn from the curse of Noah. They 

" Torture the pages of the blessed Bible, 
To sanction crime and robbery and blood, 
And, in Oppression's hateful service, libel 
Both man and God." 

Would it not be better if such men had been shoe-blacks 
or day-laborers, — better for themselves, and better for man- 
kind? Would it not have been better for Christianity if 
they had never been born ? 

Some men toil and groan to be orthodox, — to have every 
point of their creed, and of the creed of everybody else, 
exactly sound and square. But one single effort to get the 



60 



FAITHFUL OYER A FEW THINGS. 



truth is more than years of such painful orthodoxy. One 
hearty, earnest, genuine longing for light, and struggle to- 
wards it ; one conscientious putting-aside of prejudice, party 
feeling, private interest, in order to correct our possible 
errors, — is valued, no doubt, far more by God than a lazy 
assent to a whole bushel of propositions, be they never so 
sound and true. Yes, there is more faith in honest doubt 
than in ever so much cowardly and indolent acquiescence ; 
and, in the day of judgment, I am sure there will be many a 
man who passed for an infidel here, and was lashed by all 
the orthodox pulpits, rostrums, and newspapers for his here- 
sies, who will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of the 
Father ; for his soul was white, and he kept his mind un- 
spotted from the world. 

These things may teach us the grandeur and majesty of 
our lives. There is nothing common, nothing unclean, in 
man's being below. Vast principles are involved in all that 
we do, or omit to do, each day. Every day we rise to a 
great career, a grand opportunity. Into the smallest word 
and act we may put the most divine or the most devilish 
spirit. We may walk every day into heaven as we walk 
down the street, or we may walk into hell. According to 
the state of our soul every day, we shall keep company with 
devils or with angels. If we allow ourselves to be cold, self- 
ish, hard, and worldly, we shall draw around us a company 
of evil spirits impure as our own. If we resolve on a noble 
and generous direction of our life, then angels and arch- 
angels, thrones and dominions, holy and pure spirits, angels 
of light and love, cherubim with many eyes, and seraphim 
covered with wings from the nearer glory of God's presence, 
— these will be our companions and inward monitors ; for as 
we are inwardly, in the centre of our being, so shall we be 
surrounded outwardly. 

And now, as we have looked at the working of this law 
on its dark and threatening side, let us turn the picture, and 
see it on its bright and encouraging one. 



FAITHFUL OVER A FEW THINGS. 



61 



It is not any great amount of work which is required of 
us in order to be good and faithful servants : it is to be genuine 
and true in what we do. For example, take the subject of 
prayer. What does Christ ask of you ? To pray a great 
deal? To pray so many times a day? To pray morning, 
noon, and night? Xot at all. On the contrary, we are told 
not to be like those who expect to be heard for their much 
speaking, and who, for a pretence, make long prayers. 
4i When ye pray," says the good and generous Master. — 
" when ye pray." pray so. Pray more, or pray less, as your 
needs impel you : he leaves that to you. Only, when you 
pray, pray in spirit and truth. Then be sincere. Ask God 
for what you really want, not what you think it proper to ask 
for. Do not say a word till you really can put your heart 
into it. 

Pray in that way, sincerely, earnestly, ever so short a 
prayer, and that will be the same in the sight of God as if 
you read from a breviary, like a Catholic priest, so many 
hours every day. If you are faithful in the least, you will 
be faithful in much. If, when you do pray, you pray with the 
heart, and from the heart, you will then have the spirit of 
prayer ; which is the main thing. If you can say once, from 
the heart, ; * God be merciful to me, a sinner ! " you have in 
you the same spirit of penitence, the same essential humility, 
which was in the soul of Peter when he repented and was 
forgiven. Divine pardon you have tasted in that moment, and 
know its sweetness. You are in unison with the lowliest and 
loftiest saints who sing praises to God nearest the throne. 

So, if you are faithful in the smallest duty when tempted 
to do wrong, you have in you the spirit of all virtue. The 
smallest child who resists a temptation to disobey is in the 
same sphere of spiritual life with the heroic souls of confess- 
ors and martyrs. It is therefore that we are so moved by 
all narrations of fidelity, generosity, conscientiousness, no mat- 
ter how small the sphere of action, or how humble the actor. 



62 FAITHFUL OYER A PEW THINGS. 



We are not obliged, then, to pass our lives in anxiety ; in 
anxious thoughts about our duties, or in gloomy thoughts 
about our sins. Keep in the generous, kindly, loving spirit 
of Christ, and then " all things are yours." One throb of 
love is worth more, in the sight of God, than a life filled with 
anxious, conscientious, laborious, but hesitating and imper- 
fect obedience. He does not ask much of us, but asks that 
this shall be right. 

I saw in Overbeck's studio, in the Cenci Palace in Rome, 
among many drawings of a somewhat conventional char- 
acter, some in which he had allowed himself to follow 
Nature rather than the traditions of his Catholic masters. 

Among these, there was a sketch of the woman who brought 
© ~ © 

her two mites to the treasury of the temple. A burly 
Pharisee was pressing forward, ostentatiously emptying his 
purse into the opening of the great iron-bound chest on the 
floor. The poor woman, with two darling little children 
clinging to her and hiding their faces in her dress, was 
modestly reaching forward her humble gift. On the other 
side stood Jesus, with his disciples near him ; and, half turn- 
ing, with a smile on his face, he seemed to say, " See there, 
again, what I have told you so often ! It is not the gift, but 
the spirit in which it is given, that makes its value. She has 
given more than all of them." Or, as Crashaw has versi- 
fied it, — 

" Two mites, two drops, — but all her house and land, — 
Fell from an earnest heart, but trembling hand. 
The others' wanton wealth foamed high and brave ; 
The others cast away : she, only, gave." 

The reward for being faithful in small things is the oppor- 
tunity of serving God in things of more importance. Such 
is the divine law. He who has made himself ready, and has 
put on the wedding-garment, may go into the marriage-feast 
of truth and love. He who has strengthened, by diligence, 
his powers of soul here, shall have opportunity, ample and 



FAITHFUL OVER A FEW THINGS. 



63 



grand, of using them there. This life is, in one sense, all 
preliminary and provisional. We are in a studio of the 
great Artist, and he gives us little pieces of clay to model. 
One may have a better piece than another ; but when the 
Artist comes, and looks at the work, he does not think of the 
quality and size of the clay, but of the skill, patience, and 
fidelity displayed on it. 

I have heard many definitions of " art ; " but I know, on 
the whole, no better one than this, — to do faithfully what 
we do. Anything done perfectly well becomes a work of 
art. Anything finished thoroughly in all its details affects 
the mind as art ; and any high or beautiful work thoroughly 
done becomes fine art. It is the perfect finish of poetry, the 
exact proportion of architecture, the regular modulation of 
music, the delicate precision of painting and sculpture, which 
makes them all works of art. Anything which can be done 
in a slovenly way, where a little more or less makes no dif- 
ference, is not art. Shovelling gravel, or digging potatoes, 
cannot be carried to that precision, and so cannot become 
works of art. 

But life becomes a work of art when it is all directed to 
one aim, all arranged according to a plan, and all thoroughly 
executed. Christianity alone can make life high art, because 
it alone fulfils these conditions. It gives high aim to all our 
activity, fills it with a noble spirit, and teaches us to execute 
it thoroughly and perfectly. 

It is a grand and glorious truth that is taught in our text. 
Let us only be genuine, honest, true, in anything, however 
small, and we have in that the sign and pledge of an entire 
consecration of heart and life to God. He who is able to 
deny himself the least pleasure from a simple sense of duty 
has in him the spirit which would enable him, if the neces- 
sity came, " to give his body to be burned." He who feels 
the least throb of genuine, sincere love for his fellow-crea- 
tures has the spirit born in his soul which would make him 



64 



FAITHFUL OVER A FEW THINGS. 



equal to all generosities and philanthropies, if these should 
be called for. He who fulfils his duty well in any sphere is 
preparing himself for the highest. What does it matter to 
God what material we work in? We are his journeymen, 
his apprentices, learning our trade in his workshop of life. 
He gives one a piece of common wood, another a piece of 
mahogany, another of ivory, to try his skill on ; but he looks 
not at the material, but sees how we have done our work. 

So it is. A single act of genuine, sincere, thorough-going 
fidelity raises us at once to a higher plane ; and our whole 
life proceeds henceforth by a nobler, manlier measure. We 
have seen many instances of this. We have known men 
make what seemed a hard sacrifice for duty : but, after that 
hour, their mind, heart, and whole nature were elevated and 
ennobled ; they were henceforth new creatures. A genuine 
good action has a transforming efficacy on the character. 
We are not the same men afterwards as before. Pray for 
the opportunity of doing such an act ; pray for the chance 
of making some great sacrifice ; or, rather, find such an 
opportunity for yourself. Look for it, for it is very nigh 
thee now ; for angel-opportunities come to us every day, and 
we entertain them unawares. 

Sometimes I meet with people weary of life : they think 
they have nothing to live for, nothing to do in the world, 
nothing to enjoy ; they have lost their interest in everything, 
and the world is to them a thrice-told tale. They think they 
wish to die. They are mistaken : they wish to live. They 
think they wish to go away from mankind. They are mis- 
taken : they wish to come near them. Those are most 
weary who do not know this ; who have been trying to gain, 
not to give ; who do not taste the bliss of bounty ; who do 
not pour out their life on others, to have it given back again, 
full measure, pressed down, and running over, into their 
bosoms. 



FAITHFUL OYER A FEW THINGS. 

" Two hands upon the breast, 
And labor's done ; 
Two pale feet crossed in rest, 

The race is won ; 
Two eyes with coin-weights shut, 

And all tears cease ; 
Two lips where grief is mute, 
And wrath and peace : 
So pray we oftentimes, mourning, our lot; 
God, in his kindness, answereth not. 

" Two hands to work addressed, 
Aye for his praise ; 
Two feet, that never rest, 

Walking his ways ; 
Two eyes that look above 
Still through all tears ; 
Two lips that breathe but love, 
Nevermore fears : 
So cry we afterwards, low on our knees : 
Pardon those erring prayers ! Father, hear these ! " 
5 



VII 



MORAL PERSPECTIVES. 
Matt, xxiii. 23: "Ye pat tithe of mint, anise, and cumin; 

AND HAVE OMITTED THE WEIGHTIER MATTERS OP THE LAW, 

JUDGMENT, MERCY, AND FAITH." 

HOEVER has noticed a china plate will have ob- 
served that, with all its economic merits, it has grave 
defects as a work of art. The chief of these consists in an 
entire absence of what we call perspective. The house in 
the foreground is no larger than that in the extreme dis- 
tance. The water-fowl several miles off are as large as the 
little children close by. The Chinese have not yet learned 
to discriminate, in their work, the effects of distance on the 
size of objects, their forms, and their color. That department 
of art known as perspective they have not yet attained ; but it 
is a very important one. I recollect that Hogarth has a 
picture in which he represents some of the absurdities re- 
sulting from ignorance of the laws of perspective. A woman, 
leaning out of a window, is lighting her candle at a fire on a 
distant hill. A flock of sheep, goiug up the road, grow 
larger as they recede ; and a horse in the foreground is 
somewhat smaller than a man a quarter of a mile off. 

Now, there are in the world of thought and action certain 
laws analogous to those in the domain of art, forming what 
we may call moral perspective. Some men's thoughts, for 
example, obey these laws ; and we call these men sagacious 
and wise. They recognize what is near and what is distant. 

(66) 




MORAL PERSPECTIVES. 



67 



They see what is practically important, and what not. A 
merchant once told me that the secret of success in business 
was to know what thing ought to be done first, and what 
should be postponed. You are listening to a trial in a court 
of law. Obscure and conflicting testimony has confused the 
case. A great lawyer rises, and all that he does is to call 
the attention of the court and the jury to the important 
points in the case. He brings these out in a clear light, and 
places them in the foreground ; letting secondary matters 
recede into the middle distance, and unimportant ones disap- 
pear in the background. He has made a great and success- 
ful argument simply by applying the laws of perspective to 
the matter in hand. 

So it is with the great statesman, politician, essayist, or 
writer in any department of literature. So it is in all prac- 
tical life. The great general is he who sees the pivotal 
points of the campaign or the battle ; who is strong on these, 
not confused by the multitude of details. This is always 
one of the secrets of success. 

On the other hand, we feel at once the absence of intel- 
lectual perspective in a book or a man. The book is unin- 
teresting because it has no method, no progress, no leading 
thoughts, no beginning, middle, or end. The man is tire- 
some in whose conversation all things are of equal impor- 
tance ; who emphasizes equally the gossip of the street and 
the crisis of a nation. The minds of some men are like 
Alpine scenery, where vast mountains, piercing the sky with 
snowy peaks, alternate with valleys whose falling waters, 
green meadows, and luxury of foliage, make marvellous con- 
trasts with the terrific scenes above. But other minds are 
like the dead level, in which the monotonous outline and stas- 
nant waters make a dreary waste, dull and flat and empty. 

These laws of perspective also apply to the moral world, 
to good and bad, to right and wrong. It is of this that I 
wish chiefly to speak. 



68 



MORAL PERSPECTIVES. 



The text tells us that the Pharisees had no perception of 
moral perspective. They went beyond the Chinese plate, 
and reached the absurdity of Hogarth's picture. The tith- 
ing of mint was not only as important as justice, but more 
so. It hid it entirely. Their picture was all a foreground, 
filled with ritual observances ; and all the higher duties were 
omitted or forgotten. The little ceremonies in front eclipsed 
the great duties behind. 

One of the most common diseases of the conscience is this 
want of perspective, — this confusion of duties small and 
large, near and distant, important and insignificant, primary 
and subordinate. It is the state which the apostle Paul 
defines as a " weak conscience." The Corinthian Christians 
shrank with horror from the idea of eating meat offered to 
idols : but they were sectarian, and quarrelled about reli- 
gious opinions, — one saying, " I am of Paul ; " and another, 
" I am of Apollos." They were exclusive and aristocratic, 
and could not eat together at the Lord's Supper, but sat apart. 

Paul respected the conscientiousness even of a weak con- 
science, and said, that though an idol was not anything, yet 
as long as it seemed to them to be something, and they were 
conscientious about it, they ought not to eat the meat offered 
to idols, lest " their weak conscience should be defiled." 
And so, now, people observe days and times, and consider it 
a sin to take a walk on Sunday, or for little children to 
enjoy themselves. They think it is a very dangerous thing 
to doubt concerning the Trinity, or to question total depravi- 
ty, but no sin at all to buy and sell little children, to tear 
husbands from wives, and keep back the hire of the laborer 
who has reaped their fields. It is no sin, they think, to be 
grasping and sharp and mean in business ; no sin to be cen- 
sorious and bitter against all out of their own church and 
party ; but a dreadful sin to go to a church which does not 
hold the opinions they happen to believe themselves, or to 
think they believe. 



MORAL PERSPECTIVES. 



69 



A great many people are unnecessarily tormented be- 
cause they cannot have technical evidence of their conver- 
sion. They torment others in the same way. If they would 
only be contented with Scripture evidence, how happy they 
would be ! Here are some of the tests of true religion laid 
down in the New Testament : — 

44 We know that we have passed from death to life, be- 
cause we love the brethren." 

44 If any man believe that Jesus is the Christ, God dwells 
in him, and he in God." 

44 He that loveth is born of God." 

44 He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in 
him." 

44 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive 
us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 

Now, is it not strange, that, with such passages as these 
before their eyes, people shall still insist that to be baptized, 
or not to be, makes the difference between salvation and 
damnation? Thus speaks Frederick W. Robertson, the 
wise Church of England minister, concerning this Church of 
England superstition : 44 The superstitious mother baptizes 
her child in haste, because, though she does not precisely 
know what the mystic effect of baptism is, she thinks it best 
to be on the safer side, lest her child should die, and its eter- 
nity should be decided by the omission. And we go to 
preach to the Heathen, while there are men and women in 
our Christian England so bewildered with systems and ser- 
mons, so profoundly in the dark respecting the Father of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, so utterly unable to repose in Eternal 
Love and Justice, that they must guard their child from hi in 
by a ceremony, and have the shadow of a shade of doubt, 
whether, or not, for omission of theirs, that child's Creator 
and Father may curse its soul for all eternity." 

One English writer, who encourages this superstition, is 
Miss Yonge, the author of many excellent books for children 



70 



MORAL PERSPECTIVES. 



and young people. Her books are almost always sensible, 
wise, and Christian ; but she fails in this point of moral per- 
spective. She represents some very little things as though 
they were very large. She sometimes intimates that it is a 
terrible thing for an unbaptized child to die ; thus making 
of baptism a magical charm by which to save the child's 
soul from God. She does not exactly say that an unbap- 
tized child will be lost ; but she seems afraid that it may be 
so. She thus encourages a heathenish superstition, which 
neither Christ nor the Bible authorize. The Bible speaks 
of the " washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy 
Ghost." It is regeneration which washes us, not washing 
which regenerates us. The object of Christian baptism is 
this life, and not the other. Baptism is an introduction into 
the Christian Church in this world, not a preparation for the 
next. Miss Yonge, therefore, reverses the true view of 
baptism ; and, in the same way, she represents the rite of 
confirmation as so important, that the neglect of it fills her 
young people with great terror. 

A little child was dying of a cruel disease, whose only 
comfort was in listening to reading. They were reading to 
her out of a book called 44 Ministering Children." Her 
father came in, and proposed to read to her. She said, " I 
don't wish to hear that book, papa : take the other one on 
the shelf" Afterwards, her cousin said to her, 44 Why did 
you not wish to hear more out of that book ? Why did you 
ask your father to read from the one you had already fin- 
ished?" 44 Because," said the dear child, 44 it made papa 
feel badly to read in that one : so I asked him to read from 
the other." 

Now, I should like to ask Miss Yonge, whether, if this 
child, who forgot her own suffering to spare her father a 
pang of grief, — whether, if this angelic child should die 
without being baptized, God would not receive her? That 
generous love in her little patient heart would make her 



MORAL PERSPECTIVES. 



71 



dearer, in my opinion, to the heart of the Saviour, than if 
she had been baptized by the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
and confirmed by the Pope of Rome. 

The other day, I read an account of a lady who went to 
Corinth to look for her husband, after the great battle 
there. Searching, she found his body. ; * Now/ 3 says the 
narrator, " if I were writing a romance, if this were a senti- 
mental story, I should describe how she sat bathed in tears 
from morning till evening, unconscious of everything. But 
it is better than a romance : it is a noble reality. So the 
fact was, that, after shedding some natural tears, she turned 
from the dead body of her husband to the wounded soldiers 
of his company ; and, instead of indulging sentimental sor- 
row, she found comfort, for two long days, in taking care 
of the wounded and dying. " 

But suppose that this lady had never passed through any 
technical conversion : could she possibly have any better 
evidence of God's love in her soul than that which helped 
her to leave her own sorrows to care for others' woe ? God's 
life was in her heart then, if never before or after. She was 
born again at that time, because she loved the brethren. 

Yet many people forget all that Christ has said of obedi- 
ence, humility, and love being the essence of religion, and 
place this in some opinion, some ceremony, belonging to 
some church, adhering to some religious usages. To Jesus, 
life, a holy life, is the one thing needful. To them, profes- 
sion, ritual, emotion, conformity, are much higher. 

What shall we say of such persons? Only this: That 
their consciences are weak consciences, and have no sense 
of spiritual perspective. If their opinions concerning re- 
ligion and morals were put into a picture, it would be like 
the picture on a Chinese plate. 

Much harm is done in these ways. Much harm also is 
done by a confusion of great and small in regard to common 
duties and common faults. People make sins out of mis- 



72 



MORAL PERSPECTIVES. 



takes, and grave crimes out of pardonable errors. Children 
are taught, that to break a dish is as wrong as to tell a lie, 
by the indignation the mother shows when that accident 
occurs. No doubt, it is inconvenient to you to have your 
best cup or glass dropped and broken ; but, if you show a 
high indignation at what is at worst carelessness, what will 
you do when your child commits a serious offence? Your 
child has torn its clothes, or soiled them in playing in the 
dirt. Now, this is, no doubt, a bad thing for you who have 
to mend them ; but you have no right to treat it with the 
same gravity as though it were an act of cruelty, falsehood, 
or selfishness. You sophisticate your child's conscience in 
doing so. Or, if the child's sense of justice is too clear to be 
sophisticated, then you destroy your own influence. Treat 
such things as misfortunes, not as sins. Let them have their 
evil consequences if you choose. Say to the child, 44 How 
sorry I am that you have torn your frock ! Now, I don't 
know what we shall do. I am afraid you cannot go to the 
picnic." But do not say, 44 O, what a naughty child ! How 
could you do it? You shall not go to the picnic." 

We are very apt to make great sins out of what only hap- 
pens to be troublesome to ourselves. Remember, when you 
do this, that you are confusing the moral sense. Grave, 
austere reproach and solemn rebuke are precious, and should 
be kept for great occasions. Do not waste them on small 
matters. They ought not to be used in a family or in a 
school more than a few times in a year. By applying them 
every day, we destroy their effect. Treat small matters 
lightly, troublesome mistakes cheerfully ; and use stern and 
severe reproach and censure only for real sins. Then your 
censure will be remembered as long as your child lives. 

One of the great advantages of true religion is, that it 
gives this perspective to life. A religious person, laying all 
stress on the essential vital facts of the soul, is able to look 
with proper allowance and charity on the smaller faults of 



MORAL PERSPECTIVES. 



73 



men." To him there is " one thing needful ; " one only. To 
him all virtue, all duty, is briefly comprehended in this one 
thing, — Lote. As, by a law of perspective, all the lines 
of the picture perpendicular to its surface have the same 
vanishing-point ; so all the lines of duty, being parallel, 
converge to this point of love, which is always before the 
Christian eye ; and are all fulfilled in that. This constant 
conviction of the supremacy of love gives unity to thought 
and life, — gives a tone of united earnestness and charity to 
all judgments and all appeals. 

I was reading, this week, a recent book by a very intelli- 
gent Englishmen, Arthur Helps ; in which I noticed the 
want of moral perspective in his judgment of the present 
American crisis. He says that the English would have 
sympathized with the Union in its present distress, had it 
not been that " Americans were such a boastful people." 
And so, because we have this fault, which is offensive to the 
good taste of our polished English neighbors, they cannot 
take any interest in a great struggle on which is staked the 
triumph of slavery or of freedom, the salvation or the de- 
struction of a great Republic ! Because Americans boast, 
and chew tobacco, and eat with their knives, therefore the 
English will not care for the defeat or the triumph of right, 
liberty, and humanity ! Is not this tithing mint, and forget- 
ting justice? 

In the same way, among ourselves, in the struggle of great 
principles, in the conflict of mighty ideas, men allow them- 
selves to take one side or the other because of some petty 
partiality or prejudice. "This man is distasteful to me: so 
I will not stand by him in contending for the right." " That 
man is, I think, influenced by personal ambition or interest : 
therefore I will not help him to fight the battle for truth and 
justice." " These people are not to my taste : so, though 
God is with them, I will go against them." God, fortunate- 
ly, is not so fastidious ; and he stands by his oppressed, his 



74 



MORAL PERSPECTIVES. 



poor, his despised ones, though they may be Jews defiled 
with leprosy, or Africans with big lips and crooked legs. 

All great souls rise above this petty Chinese narrowness. 
Before all noble minds, everything in the picture of life 
assumes its proper proportions. Primary duties, mighty 
truths, the master-lights of our being, the essential vital 
essences of things, come forward into the foreground, and 
occupy the chief and constant interest. Back into the mid- 
dle distance fall the minor interests and lesser duties ; and 
into the shadowy background, where the soft aerial tints 
melt the outlines into ineffable beauty, and blend sky and 
land in one sweet flood of happy light, pass all the remoter 
interests of life ; on to the distant horizon-line, where heaven 
and earth become one. This is true greatness of soul, — to 
recognize the relate proportions of all truths, all duties, and 
all interests. When we meet persons thinking so, in what- 
ever society or condition of culture, we feel respect for them. 
We draw near to them. They do us good. In all that they 
say, we feel the presence of serious things. We see that 
their life is earnest. They talk of what is important. They 
do not gossip about trifles, or dispute about insignificant mat- 
ters. They make life seem worth living ; they add interest 
to every hour. As they speak, our heart burns within us ; 
and, though they may not talk in sanctimonious phrase of 
religious subjects, we feel the profound religion which has 
its home in their souls ; and so they bring us nearer to God, 
to immortality, and to heaven. 

Nearer to heaven ; for heaven, too, has its perspective 
laws. To us, living in a little point of time, on a little spot 
of space, heavenly things, as well as earthly things, must be 
seen, not as they really are, but as the laws of optics require. 
The heavens bend around us, and touch the earth, — a dome 
of deep azure by day, a dome of stars by night. But this is 
only appearance. The heavens everywhere extend into in- 
finite distances, unbent and uniform. Before a north-east 



MORAL PERSPECTIVES. 



75 



storm, the clouds form themselves into great fan-like diver- 
ging masses, rising from the north-east and south-west points 
of the sky. The vast auroral columns of fire, shooting 
towards their vanishing-point in the zenith above, seem 
converging to a point there. But this is all a perspective 
illusion. The clouds which seem to converge are parallel ; 
the auroral streamers which seem to converge are parallel : 
they only seem to converge and to bend. 

And so the lines of love, which run parallel in this world, 
seem to have their vanishing-point in death. The cloudy 
and fiery pillars of Divine Providence seem to vanish in dis- 
aster and evil. The progress of truth, justice, and humanity, 
appears to vanish in the triumph of evil and wrong. But all 
this is only apparent. This is the perspective effect of our 
short-sighted vision. Loving hearts shall go on side by side 
forever. Truth and justice shall move forward on their vast 
orbits through all space. Good shall be triumphant over 
evil, right over wrong, peace over war ; and all things in 
heaven and earth shall work for good to those who love 
God, 



VIII. 



"IF HE SLEEP, HE SHALL DO WELL." 
John xii. 12 : "Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well." 

IT is curious how large a part of every man's life is passed 
in sleep ; more than a quarter of it ; probably, on an 
average, a third. So that, if a man lives to be seventy, he 
has slept for more than twenty years. He has slept as long 
as Rip Van Winkle, only not all at once. No matter how 
industrious, how active, how ambitious, how full of enthu- 
siasm for what he has to do ; after every few hours he be- 
comes unconscious of all these vivid purposes, and drops 
away into entire indifference and ignorance of them all. 
People may be as different as you please in character, taste, 
temper ; but they must all sleep six hours out of the twenty- 
four. The rapt saint, just caught up into the seventh heaven 
in an ecstasy of prayer, comes back to earth, and goes to 
bed, and falls into some foolish dream. The most virtuous 
man in Boston, and the coarsest criminal in the penitentiary, 
at one o'clock to-night will be equalized in sleep ; the good 
man having subsided into a merely passive and negative vir- 
tue, and the sinner returned for a few hours to the innocence 
of childhood. Newton, just about to discover the great secret 
of the universe ; Shakspeare, with " Hamlet" half written ; 
Milton, with the music of paradise half sung ; Stephenson, 
with the locomotive almost invented ; Lord Bacon, with the 
" Novum Organon " nearly thought out ; Raffaelle, with the 
final touch which is to charm the world in the Dresden 

(76) 



"IF he sleep, he shall do well." 



77 



"Madonna" not yet added, — must all go to sleep, and 
lose for six hoars all consciousness of their great work and 
mission. 

It seems a great loss. 

Even the earth needs to go to sleep once a year. The 
earth around us, so full of activity and life a little while ago, 
folds its arms over its bosom, and sleeps the dreamless sleep 
of winter. The trees, which lately shook their multitude of 
leaves in the warm air, made sweet music in the rapid 
breeze, and lashed their branches angrily in the summer 
storm, now stand with all their life gone to sleep in their 
roots. But, amid this winter sleep, Xature is nursing her 
powers, and re-collecting her forces, and preparing to come 
forth anew in full and varied life with the next year. It 
seems like death ; but it is only sleep. Had we never seen 
a spring, we should say that it was quite impossible for this 
dead grass ever to revive ; for these cold, clattering branches 
to be covered again with tender, delicate leaves ; for new 
blossoms and flowers to hang tender and fragrant on bush 
and tree ; for the children to go out again, and gather sweet 
fruits and berries from these dried-up and withered sticks. 
But as what seems like death in nature is only sleep ; so that 
which we call death, Jesus called sleep. 

Did you ever stand by night on a housetop, looking down 
upon the roofs of a sleeping city? Here and there, a light 
shows where men are still awake, — some immersed in 
study ; some lonely watchers by the bed of pain or death ; 
some in gay, protracted revelry ; some obliged by poverty to 
cheat the body of its needed rest to supply food and clothing 
to starving children. All the rest of the vast population 
sleeps. From every height of wisdom and holiness they 
have gone down, from every depth of passion or sin they 
have come up, to this tranquil, neutral land of peaceful 
repose. The transcendental philosopher, who has been, in 
his lamp-lit cell, fathoming the last mysteries of being for 



78 



" IP HE SLEEP ? HE SHALL DO WELL." 



his admiring disciples ; the sublime poet, who has been 
weaving, with a smile, a tale of woe ; the preacher, who 
has finished his best sermon for to-morrow ; the orator, who 
has committed to memory the last fiery paragraph of the 
speech which is to shake a nation's soul, — these have all 
gone down into that unconscious sphere, the only sphere of 
real democratic equality. There they lie, side by side, with 
the burglar, who has arranged his plans for robbing his 
neighbor's house ; the disloyal editor, who has finished the 
paragraph which is another stab of his poisoned dagger at 
the heart of his struggling, tormented mother-land ; the 
drunken child of sin and shame ; the worldly man or wo- 
man, planning poor triumphs of a selfish success. They 
sleep beneath the kind curtains of night, beneath the watch- 
ful stars encamped in the heavens above, beneath God's 
ever-open eye. All seem to sleep the same sweet, dreamless 
sleep of the just, — the innocent children in the dormitory 
of that convent-school, the two hundred prisoners in the jail 
near by. 

And, " if they sleep, they shall do well." 

The words were true in a deeper sense than the disciples 
thought. It was a sagacious remark in that sense. " Noth- 
ing," say the works on physiology, " is so refreshing during 
sickness, or so conducive to rapid convalescence, as quiet 
sleep." Balmy sleep is kind Nature's sweet restorer. It 
serves to equalize all the functions of the frame, distributing 
the vital power to all parts, repairing all damages in the 
delicate machinery of the body ; so that, when the will- 
power is put on again in the morning, it may go to work as 
before. Perhaps Nature goes on the maxim, that " a stitch 
in time saves nine," and mends up all the little microscopic 
lesions in her tender tissues before they attain the dignity 
and danger of a case for the doctors. 

What is sleep? Nobody knows. One essential charac- 
ter, however, of sleep, is, I think, the suspension of will. 



" IP HE SLEEP, HE SHALL DO WELL." 



79 



Man ceases to be active, he becomes passive, in sleep. All 
the operations independent of will go on; as respiration, 
circulation, digestion, and the like. All that depend on the 
will, as attention, perception, direction, and management of 
thought, control of muscles, are suspended. Man, while 
awake, is always in a state of active will. We do not know 
it perhaps, but, when we stand still, we are holding our- 
selves up. We are not merely seeing and hearing, but lis- 
tening and looking, all the time ; we are always holding our 
thoughts, and guiding them. When we fall asleep, it is by 
gradually letting off the control of will from body and mind ; 
and, if you ever noticed yourself just when you were falling 
asleep, you will have observed that you took off the directing 
power from your thoughts, and let them go where they would. 
So they begin to move of themselves, by their own associa- 
tions ; and at last you begin to dream. Meantime, as the 
active power ceases, the passive and automatic powers go 
on more energetically. The breathing becomes fuller and 
deeper, as we can notice. The nutritive operations are so 
intensified, that most physiologists say that all nutrition takes 
place in sleep. The body, indeed, becomes a little colder 
in sleep ; but that is because, the activity being suspended 
through body and mind, there is no such consumption of fuel 
required in the lungs, and a small fire is kept up there. 

Therefore, as to the body of a man, "if he sleep, he shall 
do well-" Sleep comes as a physician and inspector-general, 
and examines the whole body all through, and repairs and 
renews it. We make a mistake in trying to do without sleep, 
as students and scholars do sometimes. Work as hard as 
you can, provided you can sleep hard too. An eminent 
preacher once gave me an account of his way of doing so 
much mental work, and his method in writing sermons ; and 
he concluded by saying, that a great deal of it was done by 
good hard sleeping. Said he, " I sleep as much as I can 
every night ; for I am persuaded, that, if the preacher does 



80 " IF HE SLEEP, HE SHALL DO WELL." 



not sleep duriDg the week, the congregation will sleep on 
Sunday." And I think he was right. I think it is partly 
the preacher's fault if the congregation sleep at church ; for 
how quickly we rouse up when anything is said which is real 
and yital ! A clap of thunder will not stir a man so quickly 
as an arrow of thought shot directly into his conscience and 
heart. Partly the preacher's fault, therefore, but not wholly ; 
partly it is the architect's fault, who has not ventilated the 
church ; and partly it is no one's fault. A minister said to 
me the other day, that when he preached in the country, and 
saw the farmers, who had worked in the open air all day 
during the week in their shirts, come and sit, dressed in thick 
cloth, in a hot church on Sunday, he was pleased to see them 
dropping asleep, and getting a little nap ; 64 forty winks of 
sleep,"' as Napoleon used to say ; and then waking up bright, 
and ready to listen again. Dean Swift once preached a ser- 
mon on the text in Acts, where it is stated that there were 
many lights in the upper chamber where the disciples were 
gathered, and that 6 - there sat in a window a certain young 
man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep ; and, 
as Paul was long preaching, he sunk down with sleep, and 
fell from the third loft, and was taken up dead." Dean Swift 
begins his sermon by saying, The fate of this young man 
does not seem to have been a warning to his successors who 
go to sleep in church ; except in this, that they choose safer 
places in which to indulge themselves ; and, instead of sitting 
in the window, they compose themselves more comfortably in 
the corners of the pews. 

But the dean might have bethought himself that this text 
was as much to the address of the preacher of long sermons 
as to the sleepy hearer ; and that, if Eutychus could not keep 
himself awake even to hear Paul, there must have been some 
physical cause for his drowsiness : probably his being in the 
upper part of the room, where the bad air from the people 
and the lights was collected. 



" IF HE SLEEP, HE SHALL DO WELL." 81 



But sleep rests mind as well as body. Sleep rests the con- 
science and the will. The sense of responsibility reposes in 
sleep ; and we sometimes do in our dreams the wickedest 
actions, without feeling any remorse. 

There are mysterious blessings also attending sleep. We 
wake with better, wiser thoughts. We wake from good sleep 
with a more loving heart. So God sent a deep sleep upon 
Adam, and out of it came Eve. Inspiration comes in sleep ; 
as when a deep sleep came on Abram, and in it came the 
promise, to him and to his children, of the land of Palestine. 
To Jacob came in a dream a vision of heaven, and angels 
ascending and descending ; and a clear promise, that " in his 
seed all the families of the earth should be blessed," and not 
merely the Jews. So that, in sleep, sometimes come to us 
glimpses of truths we are unable to see when awake ; perhaps 
because in sleep we are more passive and open to influences, 
and not so shut up in our own opinions and belief. So that, 
when Jacob arose from that sleep, he said, 44 Surely the Lord 
is here, and I knew it not : this is none other than the house 
of God, and the gate of heaven." Daniel's visions, which 
came to him in sleep, have exercised the waking thoughts of 
men ever since ; and still they do not know very well what 
to make of them. 

Wilkinson says that 44 man is captured in sleep, not by 
death, but by his higher nature. To-day runs in through 
a deeper day to be the parent of to-morrow ; and the man 
issues from sleep every morning, bright as the morning, and 
of life-size." 

All this teaches us of other spiritual sleeps, not uncon- 
scious, but conscious ; of the higher sleeps of the soul, when 
we sleep to care, to anxiety, to sorrow, to sin, to fear, to 
death ; falling asleep in God. Let us look at these. 

As natural and automatic sleep refreshes the body by the 
suspense of the active will, so the sleep in which the soul 
casts itself on God, suspending, for a time, strength, effort, 
6 



82 



" IF HE SLEEP, HE SHALL DO WELL." 



and all conscious goodness, is just as necessary for the repair 
and health of the soul. 

We must rest even from duty and effort sometimes ; but 
the true rest from these, the true sleep to refresh conscience 
and spirit, is to come near to God in nature or the Bible, or 
the closet of prayer. Work and prayer should alternate like 
day and night in the Christian life ; and bodily sleep and 
waking seems to be the exact analogon of this spiritual sleep 
and waking. There are two spheres — one of duty, the 
other of devotion — into which man needs alternately to 
go. They ought not to be confused. They are distinct. 
When a man says, " To work is to pray," he confuses 
them. To work is not to pray : " it is to work. When 
a man makes prayer his work, and gives his life, like the 
monks of Paganism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity, to 
a mere abstract, mystical devotion, he confuses them. You 
cannot work well, except you stop working sometimes and 
pray. You cannot pray well, unless you stop praying some- 
times to work. 

I know Paul says, " Pray without ceasing : " but by that 
I believe him to mean, " Do not confine yourself to regular 
hours of devotion, — three times a day, or seven times a 
day ; but pray all the time, as you feel the need of prayer." 
And this corresponds with the Master's saying, that true 
worship is to worship in spirit and truth. 

Here is a man harassed with anxiety and care about his 
business, about his health, about his family. Here is a 
woman harassed with care about her sick child. She thinks 
she ought to be anxious : he thinks he ought to be anxious. 
They try to be anxious, rather than not to be. They never 
throw off the burden, and go into God's glad presence, sleeping 
to care, sleeping to anxiety, as the little babe in its cradle 
sleeps. They should give all their thought for a time to 
their duties, put their whole heart into them, and then take 
an hour of rest in God's blessed love, and cast all their cares 



" IF HE SLEEP, HE SHALL DO WELL." 



83 



on Him who cares for them. Thus could they work better, 
and conquer their difficulties better : for care and anxiety- 
unnerve the soul ; and to try to live in anxiety is like trying 
to live without sleep. 

The Christian world rests on Sunday. I am no sabba- x 
tarian. I do not believe in keeping the Jewish sabbath. 
Saturday is the sabbath ; and, if any one wishes to keep the 
sabbath, let him keep Saturday. I believe that the Lord's 
Day is a day of freedom, not of constraint ; of joy, and not 
of gloom. I believe in the Catholic view of it, not the Puri- 
tanic. The Catholic Church never allows fasting on Sun- 
day, not e/en in Lent. It has always been a rule of the 
Church to make Sunday a festival, — never a fast. In Lent, 
no member of the Roman Catholic, of the Greek, or of the 
Oriental churches, is allowed to make Sunday a day of fast- 
ing. I should like to see Sunday made in every family the 
happiest of days, — a day of domestic joy and love ; a day 
for doing good ; a day in which no gloom is allowable ; a 
day on w T hich every one of the family should bring all his 
gifts of good-humor, and inventions of kindness, to the rest. 

But it is not a day for common business, for going to and 
fro. It is a clay in which to stand still, and consider the 
wonderful works of God. All life should cease its bustle 
and confusion, and grow calm. That is the beauty of our 
mode of keeping it. The world stands still every Sunday 
throughout Christendom, — stands still, and thinks ; and I 
believe an immense access of power, thought, and character 
comes to Christendom from this one source. We do not 
keep the Lord's Day as well as we might, or as well as our 
children will keep it ; but, even now, it is a source of great 
blessing to mankind. 

So also God has sent his Son to teach us to sleep to sin as 
well as to care. We are not bound to be always troubling 
ourselves about our sin. We are not bound to be awake to 
sin. The Bible says, " Be awake to righteousness." It does 



84 



" IF HE SLEEP, HE SHALL DO WELL." 



not say, Be awake to sin. We are to see our sin, and repent 
of it, and bring it to God, and lay it down before his foot- 
stool, and then accept the righteousness which is by faith. 
Open your hearts to God's forgiving love. Trust that your 
Father forgives you when you are penitent ; and you are 
forgiven. Receive the sweet sense of reconciling love into 
your heart, and repose in him, — the dear Friend who sent 
his Son to save you, not merely hereafter, but now ; not 
merely from punishment, but from sin itself. 

Jesus, you will have noticed, always speaks of death as 
sleep. He does not choose to call it death ; for he came to 
abolish death, and those who believe in him do not expect 
to die. They expect to pass through a sleep into a fuller 
life. Therefore he said of the young girl, " The damsel is 
not dead, but sleepeth ; " and of Lazarus, " Our friend Laz- 
arus sleepeth." And so the disciples, afterward, were fond 
of the phrase, and spoke of those who were asleep in Jesus. 
They said that a part of those who had seen Jesus 66 remain, 
but some are fallen asleep." 64 They which are fallen 
asleep in Christ." " We would not have you ignorant con- 
cerning them that are asleep." " Since the fathers fell 
asleep." Their choice of this expression was not accidental, 
nor w r as it a mere figure of speech. They saw, in sleep, the 
image of death ; meant to show us, that as we sink away 
every night into unconscious but happy repose, and awaken 
refreshed, so it will be at the end. 

The most remarkable use of the phrase, however, is in the 
case of Stephen. To the Jews he seemed to die a horrible 
death of anguish : to the disciples he seemed to drop into a 
pleasant slumber, his mind full of visions of Christ and 
heaven. " When he had said this, he fell asleep." 

Jesus calls death a sleep. The ancients and moderns have 
called death the sister of sleep. Lewes, in a scientific work, 
says this is a mistake ; that sleep has nothing in it like death. 
Yet perhaps there is a deeper analogy than science can per- 



" IF HE SLEEP, HE SHALL DO WELL." 85 



ceive. Death is not destruction : it is repose. It is going 
to rest with God and Christ, and the dear spirits loved and 
lost, in some of the many mansions our Father has in his 
great house, the universe. Just as there is a positive pleas- 
ure in sleep which attracts the tired man, just as food at- 
tracts the hungry man, so death attracts the weary soul. 
This instinct is no mistake. The little child, full of wakeful 
life, hates to go to bed, longs to sit up later ; but the tired 
child drops sweetly into his little bed, the flushed cheek, rest- 
ing on the round arm. So, when we are full of life, we hate 
the idea of death ; but, when it comes, it usually finds us 
tired and ready. Almost always, men are willing to go. 
In all my experience of death-beds, I have met only one 
case of a person who was unwilling to die. Usually death 
comes as sweet as sleep, bringing with it a positive joy, and 
revealing beforehand to the soul something of the love and 
peace which lie beyond these shores of time. 

Thus sleep is a symbol and teacher of many things. At 
first sight, it seems like a waste of life ; but it is just as true 
life as the waking part. Many physiologists even declare 
that sleep is the natural condition of man, and wakefulness 
the abnormal state of the body. This, I think, is not so. 
The one is as natural as the other ; for the two must be well 
balanced to make perfect health. To sleep too much is as 
unhealthy as to sleep too little. But sleep and wakefulness, 
passive life and active life, faith and works, piety and moral- 
ity, love to God and love to men, — these all are the great 
polar forces of bodily, mental, and moral life, which act and 
re-act on each other, and keep us as we ought to be. The 
man who sleeps all the time, sleeps to no purpose : his sleep 
hurts him. He who wakes all the time, wakes to no pur- 
pose : he can do nothing well. He who labors for man, 
with no faith in God, labors to little good. He who wor- 
ships God, without serving man, worships to little good : his 
prayers hurt him rather than help him. 



86 61 IF HE SLEEP, HE SHALL DO WELL." 



Sacred is the day ; sacred also the night. Holy is work ; 
holy also is prayer. 

Yes, all sleep is sacred. " If a man sleep well, he shall 
do well." A writer says, " Such is the power of the heart 
to redeem the animal life, that there is nothing more exqui- 
sitely refined and pure and beautiful than the chamber of the 
house. The couch ! — from the day that the bride sanctifies 
it to the day when the aged mother is borne from it, it 
stands clothed with loveliness and dignity. Cursed be the 
tongue that dares speak evil of the household bed ! By its 
side oscillates the cradle. Not far from it is the crib. In 
this sacred precinct, the mother's chamber, is the heart of 
the family. Here the child learns its prayer. Hither, night 
by night, angels troop. It is the holy of holies." 

The only appropriate words with which to conclude these 
reflections are those which we know so well, — the words 
of that deep and tender woman, the Christian Muse of the 
nineteenth century of Christianity, — words which, though 
we may know them, we do not tire of hearing : — 

" Of all the thoughts of God that are 
Borne inward unto souls afar, 
Along the Psalmist's music deep, 
Now tell me if there any is 
Tor gift or grace surpassing this, — 
'He giveth his beloved sleep'? 

" 0 earth, so full of dreary noises ! 
0 men, with wailing in your voices ! 
O delved gold, the waiter's heap ! 
O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall ! 
God strikes a silence through you all, 
And giveth his beloved sleep. 

" His dews drop mutely on the hill; 
His cloud above it saileth still : 
Though on its slope men sow and reap 
More softly than the dew is shed, 
Or cloud is floated overhead, 
He giveth his beloved sleep." 



IX. 



STAND STILL. 

Job xxxvii. 14: " Stand still, and consider the works of God.'' 
Eph. vi. 13: "Having done all, stand." 

THERE is a good deal of merit in being able to stand. 
It is merit, however, which is very liable to be under- 
valued. ^Ve highly prize the merit of going, and also that 
of doing ; not enough, perhaps, the worth of standing. It 
is, no doubt, a great merit in a horse to go. A horse is 
advertised to go so many miles an hour, so many minutes to 
a mile ; but it is considered an additional praise, even for a 
horse, that he can stand. He will " stand without tying," it 
is said. Now, if this is a merit in a horse, still more is it 
in a man. The man who will " stand without tying" has 
achieved a great moral accomplishment. I mean a man 
who will hold his place, and keep it, by an internal force, 
not an external one. I mean one who will stand to truth 
and principle, — not being held to them by force of outward 
circumstances, by the expectation of others, by the fear of 
being called inconsistent, by the bond of a creed or covenant 
publicly acknowledged, but by the simple power of inward 
conviction, of loyalty to conscience and right. 

Nature is full of types to show us the beauty of such 
steadfastness. Far in the depths of the primeval forest, 
there stands a tree, the monarch of the woods. A casual 
seed, wafted by the summer breeze, found for itself a favor- 
able spot of soil. Year after year it grew, — a little stalk, 

(S7) 



88 



STAND STILL. 



too small to support a bird ; over which the rabbit leaped as 
he ran ; — then larger, a sapling. So, year by year, rooting 
itself more deeply, spreading its limbs more widely, adding 
new rings of wood to its trunk, rising higher into the cir- 
cumambient air, visited by myriad insects, by various birds, 
it stands and grows. At last, it reaches its maturity, and is 
a mighty tree, monarch of the woods. Then it stands in 
the same place for a hundred years, for five hundred years, 
unchanged. The white clouds drift over its mighty head in 
the infinite expanse of heaven. The glories of morning, the 
splendid hues of evening, the deep silence of night, pass 
over it. It stands, unmoved. Everything comes and goes 
around it : it remains, contented in its rooted stability. 
Having done all it was meant to do, it stands. It does not 
see so much variety as the butterfly that lights on its leaf. 
The bird, who comes to make his summer nest in its 
branches, could tell it a thousand stories of the countries he 
has passed through in his annual migrations. But the 
patient tree is not sent to hear the news of what is hap- 
pening in the world, but to stand. Yet what majesty in this 
steadfast repose ! And at last the traveller comes to the 
place, and gazes upward into the infinite multitude of its 
bowery recesses, its flickering lights and shades, its million 
leaves waving tremulous in the summer breeze, or roaring in 
the storm, as it lashes the air with its thousand branches. 
He thinks of it, standing through so many seasons, meeting 
the spring warmth with tenderly swelling buds, and stripping 
itself in the autumn to battle with skeleton arms against 
winter tempests ; and there comes over his mind the sense 
of a sublime stability, which touches some nobler corre- 
sponding element in his own soul. 

Man was made, not only to see, to do, to go, to make 
progress, but also to stand. Until he has learned to stand, he 
has not learned the whole lesson of life. Amid all change, 
we desire something permanent ; amid all variety, something 



STAND STILL. 



89 



stable ; amid all progress, some central unity of life ; some- 
thing which deepens as we ascend ; which roots itself as we 
advance ; which grows more and more tenacious of the old, 
while becoming more and more open to the new. 

Hence the importance of being able to stand. It is 
important, first, in order to see the truth ; secondly, it is 
important, in order to retain what we have seen. 

First, mental stability is good, in order to be able to see 
the truth. It is good to stand still, and consider. 

There are two ways of seeing things. One may go to 
see, or one may stand still and see. Each way has its ad- 
vantages. If my object is to collect separate things, all the 
facts of a certain kind, I must go and look for them. To 
make a systematic collection of any kind of facts, we must 
go for them. If I want all the beetles or butterflies, all the 
Roman coins, all the books printed in the fifteenth century, 
all the best ancient pictures, all the knowledge about certain 
men or times or countries, so as to write a history or a 
biography, I must go for them. The history of Greece will 
not come to me by any inspiration, while I sit in my garden. 
I must go to libraries, and hunt it up out of many books. 
A collection of autograph-letters will not come to me as I 
stand still thinking about them : I must write to this man 
and that, inquire here and there, and so find them. 

But if my object is, not to make a full collection, but to 
see some one thing in its relations, as it lives, vital and 
active, I can often do that better by standing still. Let me 
illustrate. A man takes his gun, and goes through the 
western woods to shoot birds or other game. He finds what 
he goes for. He tramps over many miles. He pushes 
through wet thickets, where the long-billed woodcock flies 
up, orj;he pheasant whirs with sudden flight. He finds in 
the deep forest the tree to which the pigeons come at night 
to roost. The startled rabbit runs across the open meadow 
before him ; the gray or black squirrel springs lightly from 



90 



STAND STILL. 



the end of one long swinging branch to another. So the 
man conies home at night with what he went for. — a bag 
full of game. But he has seen none of these creatures in 
their natural state. Terror went before him. The squirrel 
hid behind the lofty limb, or ran affrighted up the other 
side of the tree-trunk ; and the birds, with panic-stricken 
bosoms, hid themselves among the leaves. He has got some 
birds ; but he has not seen their life. 

Now, another man goes into the forest. Perhaps you 
have so gone yourself* You sit on a stone in the shade, and 
wait, perfectly still, to see what will come. As you sit. all 
the timid creatures come out. and you see them in their 
domestic life. The diligent birds bring sticks and strings to 
make their nests ; and, while they work, chirp to each other 
about their amazing architecture. The squirrel hops out of 
his hole, bringing a nut to eat in the fresh air ; and chips the 
shell with the air of an artist, spreading his bushy tail over 
his back like a shawl. All sorts of creatures come and go 
that one never sees at any other time. All natural history 
reveals itself to patient waiting and watching. These won- 
ders of God, hidden from the wise and prudent, who know 
all that books teach, are revealed to the babes of simple, 
patient, attentive, open-eyed waiting. 

I once had occasion to wait ten minutes at one of the cor- 
ners of the Common for a gentleman who appointed to meet 
me there. I discovered, while standing still, what I never 
had discovered in walking by that place, — that it was a 
place of general appointments. Several little dramas oc- 
curred while I waited. Several persons came, and stopped, 
and looked up and down, and strolled to and fro, and came 
back ; and, at last, their friends met them, and they went 
away. A young woman came, and sat down on a bench 
very quietly. After a while, a young man arrived ; and 
each took the other's arm, and they departed. 

Now, I have been by that corner five hundred times with- 



STAND STILL. 



91 



out noticing these things ; but when I stood still there, and 
waited a few minutes, I saw them all. 

Travellers in Europe often fail of seeing what they ought 
by not standing still. They hurry with inconceivable rapid- 
ity from one place to another. They put themselves into 
the hands of a courier, and go all over the Continent. They 
give a day to Florence, and two days to Rome, and think 
they have seen Europe : hardly more than if they had staid 
at home, and read a guide-book. I saw a man in Venice, 
who had arrived there that morning, and was going away in 
the afternoon. He thought he had seen everything. We 
were sitting in a little cafe on the great square of the 
Duomo. He sat by the window, with his back to it. He 
did not even turn round, so as to look at the strange beauty 
of the scene outside the window, — the Oriental front of the 
Cathedral of St. Mark, with its domes and mosaics, and the 
groups in the old historic square. A man must stand still to 
see anything. Some of our American and English travellers 
never stand still long enough to receive a single deep impres- 
sion of any place they go to. 

Now it is the same with truth. We must stand still in 
order to receive truth in any living and profound way into 
our minds. It is different with us and with a locomotive or 
steam fire-engine, which, by running, makes a draught for its 
fire to kindle. The fire in man's heart kindles while he 
stands still. " While I was musing, the fire burned." That 
is the difference between the way of getting theology and 
getting religion. If I want to get theology, which is dead 
truth, " the skins and skeletons of truth stuffed and set up in 
cases," then I must go about, and seek for it in books, in 
sermons, in this church and the other. I must listen to all 
the statements and arguments which I can hear : so, by and 
by, I get my theology. But, if I wish for religion, it is dif- 
ferent. Then I must stand still, and consider the wonderful 
works of God. I must see God in the glory of morning, 



92 



STAND STILL. 



and the beauty of descending twilight ; in the charm of ear- 
liest birds ; in herb, tree, fruit, and flower glistening with 
dew. I must stand still each day, and think of what God 
has done for me ; how he has blessed me with home, friends, 
love, opportunity of knowledge,, and rich influences of cul- 
ture. I must consider how he has sent to me wise teachers, 
and generous, loving hearts, to stand by me amid the storms 
of life. I must remember how he has put dear little chil- 
dren in my arms, and holy wise men and women near me 
for my emergencies ; how he has borne with me in my wil- 
fulness and pride and folly, and restrained me from going 
into irremediable evil. I must recollect how often, when I 
have gone to the very verge of some fatal wrong, he has 
put forth his hand, and held me back, and saved me from 
being an utter castaway ; or how, w T hen I have prayed, be- 
cause I could not do any longer without prayer, he has hastened 
to meet my ignorant supplication, and answered it, — O, so 
sweetly ! — filling my soul down to its very depths with the 
peace of God passing all understanding ! 

So, too, I must see Christ, if at all. People perplex 
themselves and others with infinite questions about him, 
which never have been answered, nor can be. Was he 
God? Was he man? Did he preexist? What is the 
hypostatic union, — two natures in one person? They quote 
texts for, and texts against. " I and my Father are one." 
" My Father is greater than I." " Before Abraham was, I 
am." They tear these poor texts from their places in the 
living Scripture in order to fling them at our heads. Such 
texts, in their place, in the life of Jesus, are like flowers and 
fruits in a garden, full of sweetness and charm. But the 
apples, peaches, and roses, which are plucked from their 
stalks, soon decay, and become something very different. 
So are texts plucked from their context. Take that famous 
text, for example, u I and my Father are one." How was 
it spoken? Some Jews wished Jesus to issue a proclama- 



STAND STILL. 



93 



tion that he was the Messiah. " Tell us plainly if you are 
the Christ, ' they say. He answers, " See my life ; see my 
works. Do you love them? Do you see anything of God 
in them? If you do, you will follow after me, because you 
belong to me. You cannot help following me, and keeping 
by me ; and all the powers on earth cannot take you from 
me, because your heart will perpetually draw you to me and 
to my Father. It is one and the same thiug. If you come 
to me, you come to God ; because my life is to you God's 
truth and love revealed. We are one ; and if you are bound 
to me by loving my works, and sympathizing w T ith them, 
then you are bound to God, and no one can separate you 
from God." 

This is the way to know Christ, then, — to stand still, and 
look at him, not to argue about him. Look at his majestic 
holiness, so grand, yet so simple and unpretending, which 
came up in Judaea, and lasted a few years, and then filled 
the centuries with its light and beauty. Look at his religion, 
so human, yet so divine ; a religion for this world, and the 
other world too ; a religion which loves God by loving its 
brother ; a religion not of any dogma, any ceremony, any 
anxious fears, but of trust, obedience, and generous affection. 
Look at Jesus himself, the perfect revelation of God in man ; 
a man so manful, and, if I may say it, also so womanful.; a 
man harmonizing the best traits of man and woman. He 
was calm, deep, brave, a leader of men ; also jtender, child- 
like, pure, and gentle as the best of women. Stand still, 
and look at him. Come to his feast of love, and think about 
him. Sit at his feet, and thank God that he has lived, lift- 
ing us above the terror of death and sin, and showing us 
heaven here and heaven hereafter. 

Next, stability in man is loyalty. It is not merely a 
passive and indolent conservatism ; it is an active adherence 
to certain convictions, duties, and affections. Even the tree 
has a live hold of the earth : its roots are as living as its 



94 



STAND STILL. 



branches. It is not held to the ground, passively, by the 
law of gravitation ; but clings to it actively, by the law of 
life. Much more, man's stability is an active, and not a 
passive virtue. To keep to what is old, merely from an 
indolent reluctance to change, is less meritorious than the 
stability of a tree ; but to cling to the past, to the known, 
the loved, the dear, from loyalty, from gratitude, from con- 
science, — this alone is noble. We must stand actively, not 
passively. We cannot even stand on our feet passively. 
It requires a constant effort of w T ill and great balancing 
power to stand, as the human being stands, on two feet. 
The culmination of creation came, when the animal, which 
had floated, upborne in water or air by wings or fins ; which 
had crawled on the earth, or had walked on four feet, — 
finally arose, and stood on two, and was able, having done all 
other things, to stand. I suppose it would be impossible for 
the most skilful sculptor to make a statue of a man which 
should stand on two feet. In almost all other instincts, 
some animals excel men ; but in this of balancing himself, 
man excels them. It is easier to walk than to stand. In 
walking, we are partly passive, falling forward : in standing 
still, we are constantly holding ourselves upright. 

No doubt it is the destiny of man to make progress in 
truth ; to forget things behind, and reach out to things be- 
fore. But, unless he stands on something, he cannot go for- 
ward. There must be something solid beneath his feet, else 
he cannot walk. It is not progress to throw away all I 
know to-day, in order to learn something else to-morrow. 
To advance in knowledge is not wholly to forget the past, 
but to take it with us. We drop much, we put away child- 
ish things, we leave the form of truth behind us, as the 
snake his skin ; but we must not leave the substance of truth. 
In all mental progress, there are some great convictions 



" Which wake, to perish never." 



STAND STILL. 



95 



There are some mental convictions which only deepen and 
strengthen while all other thoughts change. There are 
ideas of God, freedom, immortality, justice, truth, eternal 
right, infinite love, to which we must cling as the tree clings 
to the soil ; on which we must stand, in order to move on. 

This is the distinction between real mental progress and 
that which only stimulates it. We too often imagine that 
change is progress. We see people who go from church to 
church, from creed to creed, dropping all their past at each 
step they take. This may sometimes be necessary ; but it is 
an unfortunate necessity. To lighten itself off from a rock, 
a ship may have to throw its cargo overboard ; but this is 
not a good thing to do, if it can be helped. True intellectual 
progress is to add new thoughts to the old ones. 

The reason why so many men stick in a few opinions, 
and take no new ones, is, that they are not rooted in any- 
thing. They are afraid to move, for fear of falling. They 
have not learned to stand ; so they cannot go. It is not 
because they believe the old so strongly, that they fear the 
new ; but because they believe it so feebly. The man who 
is rooted in certain convictions is not afraid to move for- 
ward ; for he knows he shall not lose them. 

Nothing is so beautiful and noble as this power of per- 
sistency and progress in one. It is beautiful to see the ship, 
w r ith all sails spread, running before a favoring breeze, — one 
cloud of white canvas ; plunging forward into the dark sea, 
and throwing it from its bow in sparkling drops and masses 
of foam ; but still more beautiful it is to see the same ship 
lying to, its head to the wind, holding itself against the 
storm, without cable or anchor ; compelling the blast which 
tries to drive it back to hold it in its place. So noble is it 
to see the man lying to in the storm of life. He is unable to 
make progress ; but he compels the very blast of adverse 
circumstance to hold him in his place. 

The weakest of all things, perhaps, is scepticism. Unless 



96 



STAND STILL. 



a man has some fixed, clear convictions, he drifts helplessly 
through the world. He has no force in himself. He can 
do nothing. The sceptic is a cipher in action, because he is 
a cipher in conviction. The tree which, at any rate, stands 
for a thousand years, is nobler than he. Pity him, however, 
and help him. He is in a morbid state. He is a sick man : 
be tender to him. Do not despise the sceptic ; but, if you 
have any faith, help him to it. Sympathize with him ; for 
some of his disease is in us all. We all of us are obliged to 
pray, " Lord, I believe : help thou mine unbelief! " 

But one source of scepticism is in the false idea that we 
are wholly passive in our belief. It is not so. When God 
shows us a truth, it is our duty to cling to it. When we 
have seen any great idea, we must not let it go, but stand to 
it firmly and loyally. A man can be loyal in thought no 
less than in action. He is disloyal, if, having seen a truth, 
he lets it go through indifference ; if curiosity is stronger in 
him than conviction ; if he loves novelty more than reality. 

Again : he who can stand firm in his convictions, and be 
loyal to his insights, is able to be also loyal to his duties. 
Having done all, he can stand. 

In the ruins of Pompeii, after they have shown you the 
great amphitheatre, the streets, the forum, the shops, the 
houses, the villas, they take you through the gate, and show 
you the stone sentry-box, where were found, buried in ashes, 
the rusted remains of the helmet and cuirass of the Roman 
sentinel. When the black cloud rose from the mountain, 
and the hot ashes fell around him, and the people rushed by 
him from the city in their frantic flight, he could do nothing 
else, but he could stand; and so he stood, and died in his 
place, suffocated by the sulphury air. He was buried deep 
beneath the ashes ; and so, after fifteen hundred years, his 
disinterred remains testify to the nobleness which stands to 
its post when it can do nothing else. 

It is, perhaps, the highest kind of courage, this of standing 



STAND STILL. 



97 



to our post, no matter whether we seem to succeed or to 
fail. For this, we dwell so often, with tearful eyes, on the 
story of the heady fight, when young men stand firm at their 
post, though conscious that it is in vain. The three hundred 
at Thermopylae, the six hundred at Balaklava, the Fifteenth 
and Twentieth Massachusetts at Ball's Bluff, — these are 
more heroic instances than the men who shared the triumphs 
of victorious days. Having done all, they stood, and stood 
to die. They stood, hour after hour, while the long waves 
of battle rolled up against them ; stood, hearing the w r ild 
yells of the overwhelming masses brought up to crush them. 

" Not theirs to reason why, 
Not theirs to make reply ; 
Theirs but to do, or die." 

Such moments of heroic courage indicate to us all what is 
the real nobleness of life. It is to do all, and then stand ; to 
stand firm to our duty, loyal to right, faithful to justice and 
truth, whether men hear or forbear. This makes it worth 
while to live. If a man only lives for success, he is poor 
and cowardly when disaster comes. Then we hear him 
finding fault, complaining, lamenting, fearing everything ; 
throwing doubt on everything ; talking like the book of Ec- 
clesiastes, not like the book of Revelation. u There is no 
good thing," he says, 4i under the sun. All men are rascals ; 
all life is vanity. Everything goes wrong. There is no 
hope for the world." The man who thus talks is one who 
has never lived for duty and right at all, only for success or 
show. 

But he who has once seen the majestic face of Duty, who 
has once for all taken her as his queen, wdth submission and 
service, feels a stern joy in the midst of all disaster, a 
strange hope borne in the bosom of disappointment, a joy 
of success amid failure. He says, fct When I am weak, then 
I am strong." God is on his side: what shall he fear? 
7 



98 



STAND STILL. 



" He is troubled on every side, yet not distressed ; per- 
plexed, but not in despair ; persecuted, but not forsaken ; 
cast down, but not destroyed." Nothing shakes his solid 
mind. And if this is noble ; if it is a grateful sight to the 
higher powers to see the good man struggling with the 
storms of fate, — why is it not also grateful to God and the 
angels to see the man who is not triumphantly virtuous, 
struggling against inbred sin, against habits of evil inherited 
or self-formed? He is unable to conquer, perhaps he is 
unable to be wholly good ; yet he will not yield. He will 
stand against evil, if he can do no more. 

There is yet another loyalty, another kind of persistence, 
as deep as these other two, — loyalty to love. To stand 
firm, rooted in pure and true affections ; to love the noble, 
the generous, the good, without regard to any return on 
their part, — this is also excellent. 

When I see persons, who, having had friends, have lost 
them, and who complain of having been deceived and mis- 
taken, I think they never loved aright. The true affections 
are as permanent as God himself. That which I have really 
loved I continue to love forever. I may not see my friend 
for many years. I may be separated in life and action. He 
may leave me for another world. He may be tired of me. 
But if I have really loved in him anything good ; if I have 
ever seen in him anything truly excellent, beautiful, and 
noble, — it is there still ; and I must love it still, in order to 
be true to myself. The heart which has not this persistency 
of affection is superficial and cold. Of all the beautiful 
things in this world, one of the most beautiful is the undying 
affection of father and child ; of brother and sister ; of friends 
who have been friends from childhood to manhood ; of those 
who, through long years of prosperity and disaster, still 
work together, go on together, pursue the same aim, live the 
same life. This unselfish love is itself the germ and begin- 
ning of the love of God. This love, so steadfast to the good 



STAND STILL. 



99 



and right in man, leads us up to the sole Fair and the sole 
True. It is comfort ; it is joy ; it is heaven. It gives unity 
of purpose to life, and strength to the weary in soul. 

Perhaps this war will be the means of developing a higher 
national life in this people, by teaching us to stand ; and to 
stand, not on prosperity and success, but on principle. We 
have had our great prosperity and success, and have been 
elated. We are now denounced and opposed by the whole 
civilized w^orld. It has happened to us, as it happens so 
often, that our punishment for sin w T as postponed until we 
had begun to repent and to do right. It often happens so. 
While men are going wrong, everything prospers. As soon 
as they begin to go right, the consequences of their previous 
sins begin to fall on them. Perhaps it is because the nation 
or the men who begin to do right have begun to be strong, 
and are better able to bear their punishments. 

But now, if God deals with us as with sons, and is chas- 
tening us, it will be for our profit. We, as a nation, in our 
hour of darkness, will perhaps grow inwardly more strong. 
We have learned in past times to grow, to act, and to go 
forward. We have been a very fast people. We have al- 
ways wished to go ahead : now, perhaps, we shall learn how 
to stand. The old loyalty to our national history, which we 
thought dead, broke forth in 1861, in a flame of light, at the 
siege of Sumter. We rose as a people to stand by the flag. 
Having learned to stand by the flag, w- e may also learn to 
stand by what the flag symbolizes ; to stand up for equal 
rights, for universal freedom, for justice to all, for a true 
democracy, for general rights. 

Thus man, the microcosm, resumes in himself all that is 
to be found in nature. He stands rooted, like the tree, in 
principles ; he moves, like the bird, in the element of free- 
dom ; he is fed, like the flower, by the sunlight and air and 
rain from the skies ; and, like the round globe itself, he 
hangs poised in the eternal heavens, moving on in the orbit 



100 



STAND STILL. 



of duty around the everlasting Sun. which is God himself, 
the same forever and forever. 

So, my friends, life goes on. Let us live it as we ought : 
standing still, from time to time, to see and consider God's 
works, and then going out to do them ; standing in our 
place, and looking from our place, and always loyal and 
faithful at our place. God sends times for work, and times 
for consideration. He sends us homes, where we may go 
and rest and consider. He sends calm evening and dewy 
night, the companionship of wise and loving hearts, and the 
peace of this holy day. Into these oratories of thought, 
love, and prayer, let us go to consider and ponder ; and then 
let us take hold of life, and do the great will of the Master, 
and let life be better for our being in it ; and when we are 
old, if God grants us to be old, we shall look from that 
mountain-top of age into the promised land of a rejoicing 
and happy future. 



X. 



GROW UP. 

Eph. iv. 15 : " Speaking the teeth en love, grow up in all 

THINGS INTO HIM "WHICH IS THE HEAD, EVEN CHRIST." 

OXE object of life is to grow. If any one grows, if he 
grows up, if he grows up in all things, if he grows up 
in all things into Christ, then he has attained one great end 
for which God placed him here. This seems a different 
statement from the old catechism statement, that the end 
of man's being is 44 to glorify God. and enjoy him forever." 
Yet it is only the same thing in another form. For how do 
we glorify God? By praising him. by singing hymns to him, 
by calling him omnipotent and omniscient ? Certainly not. 
44 Herein is my Father glorified, that ye hear much fruit : so 
shall ye be my disciples." That is what Christ says, that 
we glorify God when we bear much fruit ; and we cannot 
do that unless we grow. Therefore, to grow up vigorously 
and symmetrically, and in all things into Christ, is to glorify 
God/ 

Pope gives still another definition of the object of life. 
It is happiness. 

" 0 happiness ! our being's end and aim, — 

Good, pleasure, ease,, content, whatever thy name ; 
That something still which prompts the eternal sigh, 
For which we bear to live, or dare to die." 

But this also comes to the same thing. For what surer way 
to happiness than lies in the unfolding of all the faculties, 

(101) 



102 



GROW UP. 



the exercise of all the powers, the development of all the 
capacities of our nature, the various accomplishment, the 
daily progress, all of which are included in the word 
"growth"? To grow up is happiness; to grow up is to 
glorify God. 

The Bible, therefore, is full of indications and similitudes 
drawn from growth, " The righteous," says David, " shall 
grow like a cedar in Lebanon." Any one who has ever 
seen these noble trees will understand the force of the com- 
parison. In my last sermon, I took a tree as the type of 
stability : now I take it again as a type of growth. A cedar 
of Lebanon is growing in the Garden of Plants, in Paris. 
It is a majestic tree, spreading out its great lateral branches, 
each sustaining a mass of deep-green foliage. But on the 
blue sides of Lebanon, in their own congenial climate, these 
noble trees made each a temple for the worship of God. 
Centuries of growth had hardened their imperishable and 
fragrant wood. Their vast limbs, each a tree in itself, spread 
out, heavy with leaves, making a home for all the birds of 
the air. What better type of Christian growth than this 
patient, constant, unceasing growth of one of these great 
forest-kings? It may be a cedar of Lebanon ; or a tall elm 
in a New England valley, standing in solitary grace, an urn 
of waving greenery ; or a Norway fir, spreading its robes, 
like a duchess, over the white snow of its native mountains ; 
or a live oak, sheltering with its great shadow the men and 
cattle on a Louisiana plantation, till the cruel bell calls again 
to labor ; or perhaps it is a tulip-tree, covered with yellow 
flowers, on the plains of Kentucky ; or a lofty California fir, 
the gigantic monarch of the forest, looking out from his 
snowy Sierra upon the blue Pacific. They stand firm in 
their place. They grow year by year, adding something to 
the density of their fibre, something to their expanse and 
elevation. Yet they become little children again every year. 
They renew their youth in myriad tender buds, little fragile 



GROW UP. 



103 



leaves, and sweet childish blossoms. So they are the type 
of what is best in man, — steady growth in all that is great 
and strong, joined with a youth of the heart ever renewed 
by faith and love. 

Yet it is not enough to grow : we must grow up. Some 
trees do not grow up. If you go to the summit of Mount 
Washington, just before you reach the top you will find 
yourself walking on the tops of trees. They are true trees ; 
but, stunted by the cold, and beaten down by storms which 
rage around the bleak brow of the mountain, they spread 
themselves on the ground, and cannot rise. So it sometimes 
is with man. Discouraged by difficulty, he loses his power 
of rising. He loses faith and hope. He clings to the ground. 
It is sad to see so many men losing faith as they gain ex- 
perience ; growing more worldly, and calling their worldli- 
ness good sense. It is an unnatural state of mind. Man 
ought to grow up as he grows old ; to have more faith in 
God and man ; to enlarge his horizon ; to see more of the 
past and the future ; to live more among the things which are 
unseen, but eternal. Such a man inspires others ; elevates 
others ; brings others to new hope ; gives them new encour- 
agement ; helps them to see God in Nature, Providence, and 
Christ, and in their own hearts ; helps them to look on life 
cheerfully, and on death without anxiety, as God meant that 
we should. 

" To each unthinking being, Heaven, a friend, 
Gives not the useless knowledge of its end : 
To man imparts it, but with such a view, 
That, while he dreads it, makes him hope it too. 
The hour concealed, and so remote the fear; 
Death still draws nearer, never seeming near." 

Some men and trees grow down, and not up. You will 
see trees by the side of a river, all bending down towards 
the running stream, stretching their arms towards it, as if to 
bathe in the cool, rushing waters. No matter what their 



104 



GROW UP. 



forms are elsewhere : by the side of running water, they all 
bow down to it. It is the nature of the arbor-vitas to grow 
upward : but around Niagara it assumes fantastic forms ; 
and there it stoops towards the torrent, leaning down, 
reaches its long branches into it, and becomes as strange 
and weird a tree as the old olive-trees of Italy, which seem 
half trees, half men. So, by the side of the rushing river of 
business which roars every day through the streets of Bos- 
ton, how many men acquire a habit of stooping down, and 
leaning down, and reaching down, till they forget that it is 
the great distinction of man to .stand erect, to look up to 
the sky, and abroad over the earth, as even a Heathen poet 
knew ! — 

" Os homini sublime dedit, coelumque tueri 
Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus." 

But it is not enough to grow up : we must grow up in all 
things. In a dense old forest, where the woodman has never 
gone with his axe, you will find all sorts of trees looking 
very much alike. They have lost their individuality. They 
all strain up and up towards the light, till they look like the 
pine. The elm loses its queenly grace ; the oak, its manly 
and rugged strength ; the maple, its elliptical mass of dense, 
green foliage ; the birch, its waving, feathery branches ; the 
beech, its pendent, flowing, glittering, sunlit surfaces : and 
all grow up, straight shafts, in gloomy monotony. They 
grow up ; but that is not the only duty of a tree. Its duty 
is to spread itself out, and assume its typical form, which 
God gave it as a law, when it was a little seed, and told it 
to grow into that. 

Religious people have often made a like mistake. They 
have thought it their only business to strain up to heaven ; 
to drop off all their lateral branches, and cultivate a monot- 
onous and gloomy piety. But when God made us, and put 
into us so many faculties and powers of body and soul, he 
thereby commanded us to unfold them. He did not make 



GROW UP. 



105 



all men alike ; nor did he mean that all men should be as- 
cetic saints or austere pietists. He meant that we should 
love him, but love our brother also, and our earthly life too. 
God is pleased with us when we grow up in all things into 
Christ ; not in one thing only. He loves to see men with 
well-developed bodies ; with good perceptive organs ; with 
sharp eyes and keen senses ; with active and agile limbs, 
capable of performance and endurance ; with bright intel- 
lects, capable of reasoning and judging, of comparing and 
reflecting. God has given men the sense of beauty, and 
made the earth full of it, that this sense might have exer- 
cise. He has given us poetry and imagination, wit and 
mirth ; and do you suppose he did not mean they should 
be used? There is nothing profane in the human soul; 
nothing common or unclean. It is all through the temple 
of God ; and it is sacrilege to waste or neglect or injure any 
part of it. If a thief breaks into a Catholic church, and 
steals a necklace from the doll image which stands for the 
Virgin, it is considered not only wrong as theft, but horribly 
sinful as sacrilege. He might rob a poor family, and leave 
them to starve, and it would not be thought half as bad as 
to take this useless ornament. But this same church, and 
other churches too, encourage a form of religion which 
crushes down a large part of those faculties in man which 
are the ornament and glory of the human soul. They con- 
sider such repression as only a proper self-denial. But if 
man is the " temple of God," then why is it not the worst 
sacrilege to starve or crush any of his faculties, — those 
powers with which he serves and worships God most ac- 
ceptably ? 

" Grow up in all things, therefore." True education is 
worship. Right development is the service of God. 

This doctrine of universal development, as the aim and 
end of man's being, was taught perhaps more fully, and 
exemplified most entirely, in modern times, by the great 



106 



GROW UP. 



German poet Goethe. He framed his whole life on that 
idea. His object was self-development. Accordingly, he 
was not satisfied with the triumphs he obtained in poetry 
and literature ; but he devoted himself to science, and won 
new distinctions there. He also educated himself to busi- 
ness, and became one of the most practical and sensible of 
the ministers of the Grand Duke. He spent a long life in 
this process of self-development. Let him have the credit 
of it. Certainly it was a far more noble end than the mere 
pursuit of fame, of fortune, or of power. He sacrificed 
fame, fortune, and power, when they came in conflict with 
this object. His life, thus devoted, " without haste or rest," 
to this one large and deep idea, is a lesson to mankind of a 
truer use of genius than genius often shows. 

Yet we must add that this is not all. There is something 
more. " Grow up J 9 " Grow up in all things ; " but also 
u grow up in all things into him who is our Head, even 
Christ." This is what Goethe, with all his wisdom, failed 
to see. This is what makes the apostolic maxim w T iser than 
his. To grow up is an end, but not the final end. Grow 
up, in order to grow up into Christ. That is, since Christ 
is another name for generous Love, cultivate and unfold all 
powers in order to do good, for the sake of helping, saving, 
inspiring, guiding, animating, encouraging other souls. De- 
velop all your powers, but for universal usefulness. 

In my youth, I had a friend who was a woman of genius. 
She studied Goethe, and was thoroughly familiar with his 
thought. She also adopted it as her rule, and said she early 
learned that the only object of life was to grow. With won- 
derful, untiring energy, she pursued this end, and cultivated 
every power and faculty to the highest point. She was an 
extraordinary woman, yet not then altogether a satisfactory 
woman. There was something haughty and self-reliant, 
some absence of sympathy, some contempt for common 
people, which hurt you in intercourse with her. To her 



GROW UP. 



107 



friends, she was all generosity ; but to others, indifferent 
and unsympathizing. But God did not mean that such a 
noble soul should stop there. Being so much, he meant she 
should be more ; and so he took her through a deep experi- 
ence of weakness and sorrow, through lonely days, through 
poverty and pain ; and, at last, she had learned to add this 
crowning grace of human sympathy and tenderness to all the 
rest. She grew up into Christ, and devoted all these ripe 
and rich powers to the cause of his poor, his wounded and 
prisoners, his enslaved and oppressed ones ; and so the wo- 
man of genius became at last also the Christian woman, 
risen with Christ, and sitting in heavenly places with him. 

One method of growth is mentioned in the text — "Speak- 
ing the truth in love." It is not usually thought that growth 
comes by " speaking : " it is thought we get our Christian 
growth rather by hearing truth than by uttering it. If we 
were to exhort a church now, we should be more likely to 
say to it, " Hearing the truth meekly, grow up into Christ." 
But Paul was not in the habit of writing without a clear 
meaning ; and he meant what he said, that the Church should 
grow by speaking as well as by hearing. If hearing truth 
is our food, speaking it is our exercise. "We need exercise, 
as well as food, in order to grow ; and, as a matter of fact, 
we see that only those really grow up into a manly stature 
who have the courage and loyalty which make them speak 
the truth which they have seen. This is the daily gymnas- 
tic exercise of the Christian, — to utter faithfully, by action 
and word, his convictions, in the presence of those who do 
not share them ; to testify to the truth, whether men will 
hear or forbear : to be a burning and a shining light in the 
world ; and yet to do all this, not ostentatiously, but mod- 
estly ; not sharply, but kindly ; not in severity, but in love. 
If the spirit of Christ dwells in us, a spirit of truth and love, 
we can do it. We see men who can do it, and perhaps 
oftener women. We see those who contrive to be faithful 



108 



GROW UP. 



without giving offence ; who can say truth which is like a 
sharp sword, and yet say it so lovingly and gently that no 
one can be displeased. Such people are the salt of the 
earth ; and while they keep it from decay, while they pre- 
serve society pure, and public opinion sound, they grow up 
themselves in all things into Christ. They become more 
Christ-like every day, more divine and more human, more 
near to God and to us. They fill us with their peace, joy, 
and trust. They make life more hopeful and precious to 
us all. 



XL 



LIFE WEAKINESS. 
Eccles. i. 2: " Vanity or vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity 

OF VANITIES *, ALL IS VANITY." 

TO one man, everything is vanity ; to another, nothing. 
To Solomon, satiated with pleasure, the world seemed 
very empty ; but to every earnest man and woman it is very 
full and significant. Scepticism finds no meaning in life ; 
but faith, hope, and love find life very full of meaning. We 
are all of us sometimes like King Solomon, and say, 44 All is 
vanity ; " but we are also all of us sometimes like Paul, and 
say, 44 All things work together for good to those who love 
God." In other words, life seems very empty and very 
weary to those who live one way ; but very rich, full, and 
significant to those who live in another way. 

I know no greater misery than this condition of life-weari- 
ness. It is not a very uncommon state of mind. It happens 
more often with the young than with older persons. They 
are tired of life before they have begun to live. Such is the 
state of the present generation. They are 44 born fatigued," 
as some one says. Children in their early teens write 
verses, in which they declare themselves to have exhausted 
life. They have seen everything, and nothing is of value. 
44 Omnia fui, nihil expedit," as a Roman emperor said. 
They have just come to the feast, and are already satisfied. 

The pretence, the affectation, the assumption, of this state 
of mind is ridiculous enough ; but sometimes it is considered 

(109) 



110 



LIFE WEARINESS. 



a religious duty to take no interest in anything. A Chris- 
tian, it is supposed, ought not to care for anything but the 
world to come. He should abstract himself from this life 
and all its interests, and think only of death and eternity. 
This theory of Christianity seems to assume that God did 
not make this world ; that God is not in it ; that there is no 
such thing as Providence arranging life, and guiding it. For 

© © © / © © 

if this world is God's world ; if God is in it, around us, 
above us, beneath, within, — then life, the present life, being 
full of God, is the life eternal. Then he who despises it 
despises God. Such is the impiety belonging to all forms 
of monastic religion ; to the monasticism of Protestantism, 
no less than that of Catholicism. A Catholic monk may live 
apart from the world, and yet not despise it : but how many 
Protestants there are, believing themselves pious because 
they look with austere eyes on all the joy and activity of 
the world ; on all the gayety of youth ; on all the glory of 
nature, the beauty of art, the achievements of genius ; on all 
the humble pleasures of the uneducated but honest children 
of God, who receive life as a gift from his hands not to be 
despised ! Because Solomon, blase with pleasure, a mere 
voluptuary, a self-indulgent man of the world, heaping up 
knowledge simply for his own enjoyment, — because he 
found life at last empty, therefore it is supposed to be the 
duty of Christian men and women to despise this great gift 
of God to us all. 

Sometimes also it is thought to be very sagacious to be 
cynical, and to sneer at life as stale, flat, and unprofitable. 
A person takes a position of superiority, as though he was 
acquainted with many worlds, and, on the whole, thought 
this a poor one. To despise the world is taken as a proof 
that one knows the world very well. Therefore certain per- 
sons indulge themselves in an amiable misanthropy. They 
are very good and kind at heart ; but they love to talk of 
the degeneracy of the times, to say that the former days 



LIFE WEARINESS. 



Ill 



were better than these, to declare the world going to decay. 
I rode to town last summer, sitting fifteen minutes by the 
side of one of these gentlemen : and I was told more about 
the desperate state of the times than I had learned in ten 
years before. He told me that there was no virtue in public 
men now, no knowledge in scholars, no taste in writers, no 
piety or capacity in preachers, no good anywhere. I told 
him that there was comfort then ; that such a desperate 
state of things must be the sign of Christ's coming. He 
thought not : he thought Christ would not condescend to 
come to a generation that had deserted all the old conserva- 
tive landmarks, as this had done. So differently do we see 
things ! I had lived among those whose faces were to the 
future ; who saw the mighty rose of dawn in the eastern 
sky, like the face of God himself ; and who thanked God 
every day for being permitted to live in such a time. Mean- 
while my conservative neighbor was looking the other way 
into the departing night, and grieving for the secession of 
the owls and bats. 

What makes life seem empty? and what, on the other 
hand, makes it seem rich and full? 

Genius, the universal artist, has painted four pictures of 
this disease of life-weariness, and hung them in the galleries 
of human thought, to warn us forever of the dangers that lie 
in this direction of intellectual despair. 

First, the genius of inspiration has painted for us, in the 
book of Ecclesiastes, the portrait of Solomon, as the first 
type of this terrible disease. The book of Ecclesiastes is full 
of this dreary scepticism. Solomon had tried everything, 
— riches, power, pleasure, knowledge, — and found them all 
vanity ; and so he went about to despair of all his labor 
which he had taken under the sun. Why? Because of his 
gigantic egotism ; because he had made himself the centre 
of all things; because he had brought everything — wealth, 
knowledge, pleasure — to Solomon to try; because he had 



112 



LIFE WEARINESS. 



considered the world made for him, instead of considering 
himself made for the world. Therefore this desperate 
gloom, this black darkness of doubt. For it is with us in 
life as with the systems of Ptolemy and Copernicus. Con- 
sider your own earth in the middle of the universe, and re- 
gard all the suns, planets, and stars as moving around you 
as their centre, and the most inextricable confusion results. 
There is only an unmeaning going forward and backward 
among the planets, endless tangles of curves, without object 
and without result. But go out of this subjective theory, 
identify yourself with universal law, conceive of the sun as 
the centre, and your planet, as well as others, to go round 
it, and all becomes fair and lovely in the planetary move- 
ments ; all is full of charm, and a divine order reigns in the 
deep heavens. So when we put ourselves morally in the 
centre of things, and consider everything meant to revolve 
round us, all is confusion in the moral world ; and not till 
we make God the centre, and follow his attraction in our 
orbit of obedience and faith, does order arise out of the 
seeming contradictions of our life. 

I consider, therefore, the book of Ecclesiastes as an 
inspired picture of a great scepticism, born of a great self- 
seeking. 

A second picture is given us by Shakspeare in "Hamlet." 
That wonderful master has shown his knowledge of human 
nature in nothing more than in being able to project himself 
out of his own time, which was one of action and endeavor, 
into an age not yet arrived, in which thought was in excess 
over life ; an age " sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. " 
Hamlet belongs to our time, rather than to the day of Shak- 
speare. His disease is one we know very well. When he 
says, — 

" How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable 
Seem to me all the uses of this world! " — 

he says just what Solomon said, but not from the same 



LIFE WEARINESS. 



113 



motive. It was not a gigantic despair, born of a gigantic 
selfishness ; but it was one which came from the ideal and 
imaginative nature being developed out of all proportion to 
the active. If a man is always thinking of great things 
which may be done, noble deeds, vast creations, a beautiful 
life to lead, a good character to form, and never begins to do 
anything, then he falls at last into a condition like that of 
Hamlet. The cure for this is to do something, — some con- 
scientious, faithful work, — some thorough, steady, regular 
occupation. For to be always thinking of what ought to be 
done, and never doing it, is sure to end in despondency and 
madness at last. 

Then, in our day, two other highly gifted poets have given 
us the same picture of life-weariness, but springing from yet 
another root. Goethe in his " Faust," and Byron in his 
" Childe Harold," have painted the malady of the century 
then passing away. The disease of the eighteenth century 
was the want of faith. It did not believe in God. I do not 
mean that it was irreligious : it was sufficiently religious in 
the sense of attending to religious forms and ceremonies. It 
built hundreds of churches in England, precise, formal, the 
image of that religion, the essence of which was propriety ; ^ 
but it believed in religion, not in God. As has been well 
said, 44 Instead of having God for its religion, it had religion 
for its God." The Father, the Friend, the Divine Provi- 
dence, the Spirit which has its seat in every soul, the Love 
which moves in the depth of every heart, the Divinity which 
shapes our ends, — this God had disappeared from the faith 



* " Mamma," said a little English girl to her mother, ;< is not Mr. 
A. a very wicked man? ? " 

,,; Xo, my dear : why do you think so ? " 

" Because he never puts his face into his hat when he comes into 
his pew at church."' 

The anecdote gives a very good idea of the old-fashioned Church 
of England religion. 

8 



114 



LIFE WEARINESS. 



of the eighteenth century ; and therefore the nineteenth was 
born an orphan child, " without God and hope in the world." 
This state of things Goethe painted in his " Faust," and 
Byron in " Childe Harold." The immense popularity of 
these two books came from their exposing the condition of 
every heart. The first step towards cure was taken when 
the disease was fully painted. Faust, rich in all genius and 
knowledge, had lost his childlike faith. The Easter bells, 
and the Easter song of the women and angels, touch his 
heart only through the memory. When they sing outside 
of his study, " Christ is arisen, the joy of those who love ! " 
Faust replies, u I hear you, O heavenly tones, mighty and 
tender ! I hear the message well ; but faith is wanting in 
my heart. j\ly tears flow ; but the earth claims me again." 

u Without God, and without hope in the world," — such 
was the life as well the song of the greatest English poet of 
the century, whose wonderful genius uttered only one long 
wail of despair. On him all gifts of nature and fortune were 
wholly wasted. To him poetry brought no calm ; love, no 
joy ; success, no peace. His human heart, made for God, 
and having no God, broke, because it was so alone in the 
world.* 

We have seen what makes life empty. Now we can see 
what makes it rich and full. 

First, plenty of work makes it full. The day-laborer, who 
lives close to Nature in his regularity of toil, who goes out 
of himself in steady, continuous action, has health and con- 

* Very well to Byron applies what Mrs. Browning says so tenderly 
of Cowper : — 

" While thus guided, he remained 

Unconscious of the guiding- ; 
And things provided came, without 

The sweet sense of providing. 
He testified the solemn truth, 

Though frenzy desolated, — 
Nor man nor nature satisfy 

What only God created." 



LIFE WEARINESS. 



115 



tent in his heart, born of daily work. When we pray, 
" Give us to-day our daily bread," we may well pray that it 
may be given to us in healthy toil. Work is the real bread 
which comes down from heaven ; and is gathered every 
morning by man, going forth to his labor. Work gives 
balance and regularity to all the movements of the soul. It 
drives all diseased fancies out of the mind. The condition, 
however, is, that it shall be really work, not the show of it ; 
that we shall put ourselves wholly into it for the time ; that 
we shall not work mechanically nor reluctantly, but with 
our thoughts present, our heart in it as well as our hands. 
To be doing one thing, and thinking of something else, is 
very bad for the soul. I have lately been reading the u Biog- 
raphies of English Iron-workers and Tool-makers " (a most 
interesting book), by Smiles, in which he describes such men 
as Bramah and Nasmyth, who put their whole mind into 
what they did, and so became really heroic characters. 
From the smut and blackness of the forge and machine- 
shop, they came out the strong leaders of England, in its 
march of civilization. While the aristocracy of the land 
were wasting its strength in foolish wars of conquest, these 
men were adding, by industrial inventions, a hundred million 
of men to its power, and thousands of millions of pounds 
sterling to its wealth. They are the creators of the strength 
and wealth of England to-day. 

Necessary labor is the great blessing of life to the mass of 
men, the great educator of character to all men. Labor, 
into which thought and heart go, is the moral salvation of 
us all. We can never do without it. In the midst of all 
care and trial, work keeps us healthy and happy. After 
Nasmyth had invented the steam-hammer, which can cut in 
two a log of iron, weld an anchor, or crack a nut without 
bruising the meat, he gave up this business, and rested him- 
self by making a telescope, and studying the heavens ; and 
he has already, within a year or two, made some remarkable 



116 



LIFE WEARINESS. 



discoveries in the solar atmosphere, which Sir John Herschel 
declares to be among the greatest discoveries of the time. 
Work, then, makes life rich and full. 

But so also does love. Passion, appetite, desire, devastate 
the soul, and leave it a desert ; but love, which goes out of 
itself, which takes a hearty interest in others, which seeks 
every opportunity of helping those who need help, which is 
ingenious in resources to bless and comfort the sorrowing 
and needy, — this keeps " the world's unwithered counte- 
nance fresh as on creation's day." Friendship makes the 
earth seem rich and full. To know that there are some 
souls, hearts, and minds, here and there, who trust us, and 
whom we trust ; some who know us, and whom we know ; 
some on whom we can always rely, and who will always 
rely on us, — makes a paradise of this great world. O soli- 
tary and bereaved hearts, who feel yourselves lonely ! believe 
that there is this solace, if you seek it. Go and help in any 
good work, with earnest good will, and you will find that 
those who are working there in the same spirit have be- 
come your friends. Do not seek to be loved, but seek to 
be and do something really good, and love will come of 
itself ; for here, as always, it is truest, that, if you " give, it 
shall be given you,- — full measure, pressed down, and run- 
ning over." 

That which makes this earth seem solid, and not empty, 
is not the rocks and mountains that are in it, but the love 
that is in it. The only really solid thing in this universe is 
love. This makes our life really life. This makes us im- 
mortal while we are here. This makes us sure that death 
is no end, but only a beginning, to us and to all we love. 
God showers this blessing on us day by day, if we will only 
receive it. He sends us messages of his love in the morning 
planets and the rosy clouds of the early day. He sends us 
messages of love in the fresh air which kisses our cheek ; in 
the sweet little children around our path ; in the dear friends 



LIFE WEARINESS. 



117 



who make life full of interest and charm ; in the opportuni- 
ties of usefulness, of improvement, of progress, which come 
hour by hour, day by day ; in all the grand events of his- 
tory ; in the noble struggles of our nation in this hour of 
trial ; in the grand courage of our brothers and sons, going 
to lay down their lives for their dear mother-land. God's 
infinite love comes to us daily in all these events and oppor- 
tunities ; and how can any one say that " all is vanity," 
when such inspirations are open to the soul? 

Love, therefore, joining hands with faith and work, makes 
our life rich and full. These three, neither of them alone ; 
work which is done in love, love which is born of faith. 
And it is a blessed thing, that, the longer we live thus, the 
more beautiful the world becomes, the more rich and pre- 
cious our life seems. It is the young who are oftenest tired 
of life. As we live on, we seem to grow younger, not older ; 
we find ourselves coming nearer to God and man ; we grow 
more like little children in our hearts. Therefore we see so 
often that beautiful picture of old age and childhood forming 
the loveliest friendship ; the old man with white hair, and 
with the wisdom of years treasured up in his large experi- 
ence, being the companion and best friend of little curly- 
headed boys and girls, who are never so happy as with him. 
Beautiful is age when it does not grow hard and cold, but 
grows evermore full of faith and love. The old man looks 
backward through a life in which he has learned to know 
the wonders of Nature, to know the heart and thoughts of 
many varieties of human character ; in which he has done 
his part in the world in his own place, doing faithfully what- 
ever he has done. He looks back over the long perspective, 
and he sees how kindly God has led him on ; how he has 
been taught by disappointment and success ; how he has 
gone deep into his own heart, gathered up wisdom, become 
truly free by self-control and self-direction ; he sees how he 
has ceased to think of God as Power and Law, and come to 



118 



LIFE WEARINESS. 



think of him as Friend and Father. And so he wonders that 
he ever could have been weary of life ; so he feels the infinite 
riches of the universe ; so he thanks God, not with words, 
but in the depths of a happy heart, for the gift of existence ; 
so he looks on all things as God looked on them, when he 
made them, and says, " It is all good." 
Thus we see how, by true living, — 

" More and more a providence 
Of love is understood ; 
Making the springs of time and sense 
Sweet with eternal good*'* 



XIL 



THE FRAGMENTS. 



John vi. 12: " Gather up the fragments that remain, that 

NOTHING BE LOST." 



IWO facts strike us in regard to Xature : one is its 



-a- exuberance ; the other,, its economy. 

The exuberance of Xature appears everywhere. There is 
everywhere a surplus, — a large margin over and above 
w T hat is necessary. In what immense spaces the planets 
swim through the heavens ! The moon, nearest to us, is 
two hundred thousand miles away. What vast spaces in 
the universe are empty of planet, sun or star, comet or 
nebula ! Then, on the earth, what latitude is given to the 
ocean ! What vast portions of every continent are empty ! 
China, with its three hundred millions of inhabitants, has 
great forests, deserts, and mountains, where no one dwells. 
Massachusetts is much the most densely settled State in the 
Union ; but, if you ride on the cars from Boston to Provi- 
dence, it seems, for a great part of the way, as if you were 
going through an uninhabited country. Xew York, with its 
three millions of people, Peunsylvania and Ohio, each with 
their two millions, have enough rich farming land and wood- 
land to give homes to the whole population of the United 
States, and leave room enough for twice as many more. 
What quantities of trees grow, stand, fall, and decay, unused 
and unseen by man ! What flowers come and go every 
summer day in the thousand valleys, never noticed ! What 




(119) 



120 



THE FRAGMENTS. 



fruit ripens and falls uneaten by nmn or beast ! What 
myriads of seeds are produced for one that germinates ! 
How luxuriant is the aspect of nature ! — its infinite show- 
ers of light ; its treasures of rain and snow ; its abundance 
of everything ; its generous superfluity, — 

"Wild above rule or art, enormous bliss I" 

So in the nature of man is the same exuberance, the same 
abundance in his faculties and his experience. Our life is 
not tied down to any mechanical rigor of performance. We 
have time enough, opportunity enough, faculty enough, for 
everything. What we cannot do to-day, we can do to-morrow. 
What we cannot do one way, we can do another. There is 
plenty of everything in human nature. One thing only we 
need ; and that is faith in it, — faith in the nature God has 
given us 9 its capacities and possibilities. Faith is the golden 
key which unlocks this splendid treasury, the human, soul. 
Whatever is right and good, whatever the instinct of the 
heart tells us to do, believe that we are able to do it, and we 
can do it. 

How much there is in man, has never been discovered. 
The maximum of human attainments has not been reached. 
Napoleon did a great deal ; but he seemed to himself to be 
idle. He might have done a great deal more. Theodore 
Parker, one of the severest workers we ever had in America, 
declared that he had left half his faculties unused. The great- 
est saint is conscious to himself of how much better he might 
be than he is ; and so he calls himself the chief of sinners. 
The great poet or artist knows that his noblest deed has had 
another, — 

" Of bright imagination born, — - 
A loftier and a nobler brother, 
From dear existence torn." 

One of Milton's sonnets, written at twenty-three years of 
age, laments his own backwardness, and his late spring that 



THE FRAGMENTS. 



121 



shows no bud or blossom. If he had known what he was to 
do before he died, he might have been patient. 

Time, also, is given us in profusion. We often say we 
have no time for this or that ; but we usually say what is 
not true. Every one has ten times as much time as he uses. 
No one has ever put into a day a hundredth part of what he 
might. One day would be enough to think everything, feel 
everything, and do everything we need to in this world, if we 
were only fully alive, full enough of soul, to make its hours 
crowded with glorious life. Did you ever see a letter from 
any one to a distant friend, which did not begin with this 
apology : "I ought to have written to you sooner ; but I had 
no time " ? It is almost always a falsehood. It should be, 
" I had not the will, I had not the heart, I had not the confi- 
dence in myself, nor the trust that things would come to me 
to say. My mind has seemed empty." That is the true 
reason ; but we make believe it is a want of time. No : time 
is inexhaustible to a living soul. Only let the soul be suffi- 
ciently full of life, and a moment seems like a year. 

To be sure, there is a certain amount of time required for 
all merely mechanical work ; but, for soul-work, there is 
always time enough, if we only find soul enough. It takes 
me fifteen minutes to come from the town in which I live to 
Boston ; and I do not see how that can be abridged : but, 
when I reach Boston, I go to see some noble person, some 
dear friend, or some earnest, generous spirit ; or I go to the 
home of sorrow and trial ; and, in one minute, I live a 
whole year of thought or sympathy or purpose. One second 
is long enough to change the current of life, — to turn us 
upward towards heaven, or downward towards hell. The 
critical moments of life are not to be measured by the watch 
or the almanac. We look back over weary years, empty of 
all interest, to some few golden moments when we really 
lived. Those moments of pure insight, of pure love, of real 
action, — those made our life : all the rest is nothing. 
" What is the chaff to the wheat?" 



122 



THE FRAGMENTS. 



We have, therefore, not only enough of everything, but - 
more than enough, and a great deal more than enough. The 
busiest person has some golden, precious moments of leisure, 
worth far more than the long days of the idle man. 

Consider the life of Jesus. His active recorded life i3 
thought to have been, at most, three years : probably it was 
not much more than one year. But because he had faith in 
God, and confidence in himself, his overflowing soul filled 
those few months so full of thought and love, that the four 
Gospels, the sacred books of mankind, could only take up 
and record for us a small part of it. If everything had been 
written, " the world itself could not contain the books that 
should be written." That is hardly an hyperbole. Of 
course, it could not. Why, what Jesus said and did each 
day, during the twelve hours, was all memorable. We have 
only gathered up a few shells by the side of that ocean of 
truth and love. We are riparian proprietors, so to speak, 
dwelling on a little bit of the shore, and looking out over a 
small portion of the surface of the immeasurable sea which 
bathes all the continents of earth. 

But thus, while nature and life are so exuberant, the diffi- 
culty is that we waste them both. Therefore the lesson of our 
text : " Let nothing be lost." Count nothing insignificant. 

This lesson is also taught by Nature, throughout whose 
boundless profusion and royal abundance there reigns an 
equally austere economy. God gathers up in Nature the 
fragments, and allows nothing to be lost. Not a comet, 
escaped from its elliptic restraint, and shooting off on a par- 
abolic or hyperbolic curve into outer darkness, but Nature 
reaches out after it with the long arm of gravitation, whose 
fingers are fine enough to catch the minutest particle of im- 
palpable ether, and strong enough to hold in their places the 
enormous masses of planets and suns. Not a drop of rain, 
falling in primeval showers to water Eden, but has been 
kept safe till now. It escaped into the sod, it filtered 
through the sand ; but it was taken into the company of 



THE FRAGMENTS. 



123 



other drops, and carried in hidden channels below, till it 
came up a flashing diamond in a mountain-spring, was 
tossed on the curve of a tumbling torrent, and at last went 
to the ocean by some old historic river, — Euphrates or Nile. 
Then the sun darted forth a ray of heat to meet it, — a mes- 
senger sent ninety-six millions of miles, charged to gather 
up this one drop, and lift it again into air, and, with its 
evaporated tissue, to paint the edge of a cloud on some 
golden sunset. Everything is transformed in Nature ; 
nothing lost. Imperial Caesar, turned to clay, may stop a 
hole to keep away the wind ; but he is not lost. Decay's 
effacing fingers sweep away the lines of lingering beauty in 
flower and tree and man, but the mighty chemical affinities 
continually gather up all the particles, and combine them 
anew, and suffer nothing to be lost. I recollect in a class- 
recitation at Cambridge, in chemistry, the question being put 
about some new combination, when everything else had been 
accounted for, — " But what became of the carbon?" said 
the professor. The student hesitated, and at last said, " It 
was lost, sir." What laughter greeted the absurd reply! 
for chemistry has announced to the world, as its fundamental 
law, that in Nature nothing is lost. All things are changed. 
Tennyson says in one of his poems, unpublished in this 
country, — 

" When will the stream be aweary of flowing 

Under my eye ? 
When will the wind be aweary of blowing 

Over the sky? 
When will the clouds be aweary of fleeting, 
When will the heart be aweary of beating, 

And Nature die ? 
Never, O, never ! Nothing will die ! 

The stream flows ; 

The wind blows ; 

The cloud fleets ; 

The heart beats ; 

Nothing will die ! " 



124 



THE FRAGMENTS. 



And this great law of economy in Nature has its corre- 
sponding law in the moral and spiritual world. When 
Christ said to his disciples, " Gather up the fragments that 
remain, that nothing be lost," it was not because they needed 
the fragments of bread and fish, but it was to teach them 
the law of economy, — that it was wrong to waste anything. 
He had just shown them that they never could need when he 
was near them ; that he had at his beck the inexhaustible 
supplies of miracle. But that might make them careless 
and wasteful. God has limited us by need, that we may 
limit ourselves afterwards by economy. This economy is 
sacred and religious, not selfish. It recognizes all things as 
given by God ; given for use, not waste ; to be treated rev- 
erently, not recklessly. TThen we see any one throw away 
a good piece of bread, we rightly feel pained. It is not 
because of the value of the bread, but because of the disre- 
spect shown to what religious people, in their old-fashioned 
language, called " God's good creature." If a friend had 
made for you, with thought, love, and skill, some little gift, 
a pen-wiper or a book-mark, you would not throw it away 
when you did not want it longer, because your friend's love, 
time, and care went into it. But God has put into the piece 
of bread how much creative wisdom and providing love ! 
the wonderful mystery of the seed and its germination ; the 
horticulture of prepared soils, moisture, air, sun, and the 
changing seasons ; and then the chemistry of fermentation, 
and the alchemy of fire. A piece of bread becomes sacred 
when we think of such things ; and to partake of it is to 
partake of the sacrament. You would not throw a piece of 
consecrated bread from the communion-table upon the floor, 
to be trampled on, for it has been sanctified by love and 
prayer. But all Nature is thus consecrated, and becomes 
sacred, when we see the finger of God in it. 

Therefore our New England ancestors, who themselves 
learned economy as a necessity on these sterile shores, taught 



THE FRAGMENTS. 



125 



it to their children as a religion. New England children, 
down to my time, were taught economy as a sacred moral 
duty. I am afraid that that time has passed away. A 
habit of wastefulness, injurious to the character, has since 
come in with prosperity. 

But as everything good runs into an extreme, and so be- 
comes a vice, our New England economy sometimes ran into 
an extreme, and became parsimony. Sometimes we can 
save a thing only by using it, or by giving it away. We 
lose it by trying to keep it. You remember the epitaph on 
a tombstone : " What I gave, I have ; what I spent, I had ; 
what I kept, I lost." The great millionnaire, who dies with- 
out having done any great good with his wealth, evidently 
loses it all in a day. He might have kept part of it by using 

it in some good cause, for some good end. He mi£rht have 
© ■ © © 

had some royal charity, some bounty that was to bless and 
save thousands growing up under his own living eyes ; have 
caused the widows' hearts to sing for joy. lightened the sor- 
rows of the orphans, and been followed to the grave by the 
grateful feet of thousands whom he had rescued. There are 
lower and higher economies : if he kept his money, he only 
practised the lowest. 

So sometimes we lose time by trying to save it in a par- 
simonious way ; trying to utilize every moment to some out- 
ward, visible end. Young men sometimes make this mis- 
take when they begin to preach. They see that there is a 
great deal to do, and so allow themselves no relaxation, but 
sit all day long trying to study or to write. But this stupe- 
fies them. They would do better to expand and vitalize 
their souls by the good intercourse of friendship, or the glad 
inspiration of Nature. Then they would come back to their 
study, and have something to say. As it is, they only sit 
looking at the blank paper with a blank mind. So Milton 
says, — 



126 



THE FRAGMENTS. 



" To measure life, learn thou betimes, and know 
Towards solid good what leads the nearest way ; 
For other things mild Heaven a time ordains, 
And disapproves that care, though wise in show, 
That with superfluous labor loads the day." 

Dissipation is waste ; but recreation is economy. So that 
whatever time is spent in gaining new life and moral power 
is well spent ; and that is just the rule by which to distin- 
guish between the kind and amount of amusement which is 
right. That which recreates (re-creates) the mind is good ; 
that which dissipates, wastes it, is bad. 

But there is a higher economy still in this great scale. 
There is an economy of life, which consists in giving it 
away ; an economy of the heart and soul, w T hich consists in 
their devotion to a great good. Jesus says, " He who loves 
his life shall lose it ; but he who loses his life for my name's 
sake and the gospel's, the same shall find it." He does not 
teach us any mercantile economy or any calculating religion. 
Christ's religion is not a spiritual insurance-office, by which 
we can secure heaven and escape hell hereafter by a certain 
weekly regular deposit of prayers and religious acts here. 
Many people think so, and are taught so. They are taught 
that Christ came merely to show them how to save their 
own souls from hell, and that this is the true thing to aim 
at. Christianity teaches no such selfishness as that. It 
teaches us that God will take care of our soul and our safety, 
if we go out and do his work and his will. It says, " If we 
will love others, God will love and bless us." 

Yes : Jesus came to gather up the fragments which remain 
of human virtue, love, and goodness, that nothing should be 
lost. There are always some fragments which remain in 
every heart. God's great law of economy applies to these. 
If he does not allow a comet to wander hopelessly away 
into emptiness, but sends the great archangel gravitation to 
bring it back, he will not let a soul, made in his own image, 



THE FRAGMENTS. 



127 



go off on any fatal erratic curve into outer darkness. The 
great archangel Love shall pursue the lost souls, and find 
thein. That is what Christianity teaches, if it teaches any- 
thing. The Son of man comes to seek and save the lost. 
If he had pity on the fragments of bread, the overflowings 
of his bountiful good-will, will he not pity the fragments of 
broken minds and broken hearts? He does. He does not 
choose to drink the cup of joy alone in the heavenly kingdom 
of God. He cannot be happy there, unless you and I are 
there with him. He cannot be happy there, unless we bring 
with us our lost brethren and sisters who are perishing 
around us for lack of a little love. Has God sent Christ to 
seek and save the lost? and shall he not find them and save 
them? Why, not a particle of these multitudinous snow- 
flakes which fell last night but has been made by divine fin- 
gers into lovely hexagons, and not a particle but comes to 
do a special work. Shall not Christ do his? Yea, verily. 
"As the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and 
returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, making it 
bring forth seed to the sower, and bread to the eater ; so 
shall my word be that goeth out of my mouth." 

Man is made for progress ; but there are two kinds of 
progress. One kind consists in going forward from one 
thing to another ; one knowledge to another knowledge ; 
dropping the past behind us, in order to attain the future. 
It is leaving the good to gain the better ; giving up one truth 
for the sake of another. It is being " eternal seekers, with 
no past behind us." But another and higher kind is that 
which gathers up the past into the present, absorbs history 
into life, makes all old experiences " consolidate in mind and 
frame." That is the only progress which endures : the other 
always falls a victim to reaction. Reaction in life and his- 
tory is only going back to pick up something we have forgot- 
ten. So the reaction from democracy in Europe to monarchy 
is going back to get something good in monarchy which 



128 



THE FRAGMENTS. 



democracy forgot to take. Reaction from Protestantism to 
Catholicism is going back to get something good belonging 
to the Roman Church which Protestantism left behind. Re- 
action from Liberal Christianity to Orthodoxy is the same 
thing. No progress is sure that leaves anything behind it 
forgotten or neglected ; and so the human race will make no 
progress while it leaves any part neglected behind. We are 
members of a great body, and each needs, all the rest. The 
English thought they could do without the Irish, and leave 
them behind, uncultivated, mere serfs ; but the Irish have 
hung as a clog on the progress of England, and compelled 
her at last to recognize their claim. We thought we could 
leave the negroes behind, and neglect them, while we, mem- 
bers of the great American Republic, were going on, in long 
strides, to the acme of prosperity and greatness. But wiser 
fate said, " No." We have been obliged to turn round, and 
go back, and find the negro, to take him with us. And so 
there can be no real progress or peace in society while any 
class remains neglected ; while there are drunkards and 
prostitutes, beggars and criminals, who have no care and no 
love extended to them. The taint of their disease comes up 
into our palaces and into our hearts. Let us, then, gather 
up the fragments, and seek and save the lost. The worst 
man and the worst woman have something good in them. 
Let us seek it, find it, and save it. The human race will 
not be saved till every human being is saved. The Ortho- 
dox doctrine was, that the redeemed would be made happier 
by looking down into hell, and seeing the torments of the 
damned, — their own fathers and children. The exact op- 
posite is the truth. The redeemed are only redeemed them- 
selves by saving the lost ; and they cannot get to heaven till 
they bring the lost with them. 

In the year 1717, from the 1st to the 6th of March, about 
this very time, there was the greatest snow-storm that ever 
happened in New England in the memory of man. The 



THE FRAGMENTS. 



129 



snow drifted twenty feet high in some places. In the town 
of Eastham, on the Cape, old Mr. Treat, who had been 
minister there for forty-five years, died. Xo paths could be 
cut to carry him to the grave. He lay in the house several 
days. At last, the Indians of Eastham, whom he had helped 
and taught, protected and comforted, dug an archway through 
the drifts, and carried the coffin of their friend on their own 
shoulders to the graveyard. That is the way in which we 
are to get to heaven : the hands of those we have helped 
must dig the way for us, and we must be carried on their 
shoulders through the drifts of our frozen life. 

Many sins w T e commit, which freeze around the heart, and 
case it in an icy coat of selfishness. Many stormy and tem- 
pestuous gusts of passion rage over the human soul. But if 
the angel of charity stays with us ; if we do not despise the 
poor, do not neglect the stranger, do not forsake the vicious 
and the prisoner, the needy and the ignorant ; if w T e hold out 
a hand of help to the helpless, — these little acts of love will 
react on our own soul, and melt the ice, and warm our hearts 
with a strange spring-time of hope and joy. Those whose 
broken hearts you have healed ; whose hurt consciences you 
have comforted ; wmose lost steps you have guided ; whose 
despair you have removed ; for whom you have given 
thought, time, strength, and life, — they are to carry you on 
their shoulders to heaven. 

This explains the singular peace and comfort which our 
brave men have in the midst of their sufferings in the battle 
and camp, in the hospitals, and on the field. They have 
given themselves for the country and for us, and God blesses 
them. They forget themselves, and he remembers them. 
One wrote home to his wife the other day. that he had lost 
both legs ; and he drew on his letter the picture of a man on 
crutches, and said, " That's the way I'm coming home to 
you, Mary : but don't mind, Mary ; we will be happy yet." 
Such men give, and it is given to them again : full measure, 
9 



130 



THE FRAGMENTS. 



pressed down, running over, does God give into their bosoms, 
of his comfort and of his peace. 

In the mint in Philadelphia, there is a room where the 
gold is rolled and clipped and stamped, and cut into coin. 
The floor is of iron cut into holes, and the sweepings of the 
room fall through, and once a month are put into the fur- 
nace ; and in this way are saved some forty thousand dollars' 
worth of gold every year that before was lost. Bat what 
are fragments of gold or diamond to fragments of love, hope, 
and insight? 

So gather up the fragments which remain of God's won- 
derful gifts in Nature and in Providence ; of his mysterious 
and beautiful gifts in the minds, consciences, and hearts of 
men. 

You have seen the priests, after the sacrament, take care 
that none of the consecrated bread should be wasted, and 
request the communicants to distribute among them what 
remains, and eat it all up, to the last crumb. Do this, if it 
seems to you proper and devout. Tithe the mint and the 
anise, if you will ; but forget not the weightier matters of 
the law. Do not forget, that far more sacred than any con- 
secrated bread is that true bread which came down from 
heaven ; that sacred, divine gift of the soul which God has 
placed in man ; that power of aspiration, capacity of progress, 
sense of right, knowledge of infinite truth, fitness for bound- 
less love and thought and action. Do not let even the crumbs 
of this fall to the ground, if you can save them ; for, of all 
holy things on earth, nothing is so holy in the sight of God 
as the soul of man. 



XIII. 



ALL SOULS ARE GOD'S. 
Ezek. xviii. 4: "All Souls are Mine." 

DURING the past week * two Christian festivals have 
been celebrated by the Church of Rome, which • I 
should be glad to see celebrated by all Christian denomi- 
nations. They were instituted in days when the Church 
was truly Catholic, and had not become exclusive, — the 
days of church unity and universality ; and these days are 
festivals of a universal Church and of a true unity. In the 
year eight hundred and thirty-five, the first day of November 
was appointed by Gregory IV. as a festival for all the saints ; 
and it has ever since been known as All-Saints' Day. It is 
a day on which we may remember the saints and martyrs 
of every time, every land, and every creed ; a day on which 
the war of theology should cease, the bitterness of contro- 
versy subside; which should be a " truce of God" amid 
warring sects. On this day, recognizing the fact that emi- 
nent goodness is monopolized by no party, that devoted piety 
and disinterested humanity are to be found in every denomi- 
nation, all sections of the Church might unite in one great 
procession, to visit, with grateful love and memory, the holy 
tombs of all the good. Catholic and Protestant, Methodist 
and Quaker, Orthodox and Heterodox, might kneel together 



* This sermon was preached on the Sunday following the festivals 
of All Saints and All Souls, November 1 and November 2. 

(131) 



132 



ALL SOULS ARE GOD ? S. 



in grateful prayer around the graves of St. Francis and St. 
Charles, of Oberlin and Fenelon, of George Fox and John 
Wesley, of Milton and Priestley. On this day, the Church 
would be truly universal. As the first day of November is 
the Feast of All Saints, so the second day of November is 
the Feast of All Souls ; and is, in its idea and spirit, even 
more universal, more catholic, than the other. If the first 
is the day of the universal church brotherhood, the other is 
a clay for universal human brotherhood. It was originally 
established in the eleventh century, in commemoration of the 
souls of those who had departed during the year. It is not 
intended for the great and distinguished alone, not for the 
eminently good alone ; but for all, — all souls. It is not for 
the holy and happy alone ; but for the unwise, the unhappy, 
the unholy also, — those whose present lives seem to be 
failures. It is a feast of Christian hope, of hope for all, 
— hope founded in the indestructible elements of the soul 
itself, as made by God, and made for himself. 

This last is the subject for our meditations to-day. Let 
us see how it is that all souls belong to God ; what it is that 
is meant when he says, " All souls are mine." Let us see 
how the despised, forgotten, abandoned children of earth still 
belong to God, and still are dear to him. 

When we look at the world from any other point of view 
than the Christian, we are led to despise or to undervalue the 
mass of men. The man of culture looks down on them as 
incapable of mental improvement ; the man of righteousness 
sees them hopelessly immersed in vice and crime ; the re- 
former turns away discouraged, seeing how they cling to old 
abuses. Every thing discourages us but Christianity. That 
enables us to take off all these coverings, and find beneath 
the indestructible elements and capacities of the soul itself. 
We see standing before us a muffled figure : it has been dug 
out of the ground, and is covered with a mass of earth. 
The man of taste looks at, and finds nothing attractive : 



ALL SOULS ARE GOD'S. 



133 



he sees only the wretched; covering. The moralist looks at it, 
and finds it hopelessly stained with the earth and the soil in 
which it has so long lain. The reformer is discouraged, find- 
ing that it is in fragments, — whole limbs wanting ; and con- 
siders its restoration hopeless. Bat another comes, inspired 
by a profounder hope : and he sees beneath the stains the 
divine lineaments ; in the broken fragments the wonderful 
proportions. Carefully he removes the coverings ; tenderly 
he cleanses it from its stains ; patiently he readjusts the 
broken parts, and supplies those which are wanting : and 
so at last it stands, in a royal museum or pontifical palace, 
an Apollo or a Venus, the very type of manly grace or fem- 
inine beauty, — a statue which enchants the world. The 
statue, broken and defaced, is our common humanity ; so 
broken, so defaced, that only the far-reaching hope, founded 
on God's interest in the human soul, can enable us to do 
anything adequately for its restoration. 

1. All souls belong to God and to goodness by creation. 
God has evidently created every soul for goodness. He has 
carefully endowed it with indestructible faculties looking that 
way. Every soul has an indestructible idea of right and 
wrong, producing the feeling of obligation on the one hand, 
of penitence or remorse on the other ; every soul Has the 
tendency to worship, to look up to some spiritual power 
higher than itself, better than itself ; every soul is endowed 
with the gift of freedom, made capable of choosing between 
life and death, good and evil ; every soul is endowed with 
reason, with a capacity of knowledge ; and especially is 
every soul endowed with the faculty of improvement, of 
progress. 

Compared with the capacities and powers which are com- 
mon to all, how small are the differences of genius or talent 
between man and man ! Now, suppose that we should see 
in the midst of our city a building just erected with care and 
cost. Its foundations are deeply laid ; its walls are of solid 



134 



ALL SOULS ARE GOD'S. 



stone ; its various apartments are arranged with skill for 
domestic and social objects : but is is unoccupied and unused. 
We do not believe that its owner intends it to remain so : 
we believe that the day will come in which these rooms 
shall become a home ; in which these vacant chambers shall 
resound with the glad shouts of children, and the happy 
laughter of youth ; where one room shall be devoted to 
earnest study, another to serious conversation, another to 
safe repose, and the whole be sanctified by prayer. Such a 
building has God erected in every human soul. One cham- 
ber of the mind is fitted for thought, another for affection, 
another for earnest work, another for imagination, and the 
whole to be the temple of God. It stands now vacant ; its 
rooms unswept, unfurnished, wakened by no happy echoes : 
but shall it be so always ? Will God allow this soul, which 
belongs to him, so carefully provided with infinite faculties, 
to go wholly to waste? The man who buried his lord's 
talent was rebuked : will God bury his own talent, having 
made the soul for himself? Will he let it remain hidden in 
the earth, by not putting it to use, and educating it in the 
course of his providence? 

2. No : God, having made the soul for goodness, is also 
educating it for goodness. The soul, which belongs to 
God by creation, will also belong to him by education and 
culture. 

We send our children to school, — to the primary school, 
to learn to read and write ; to the grammar-school, perhaps 
to an academy, perhaps to college ; we put them to learn a 
trade or a profession, — and then we say Ave have given 
them an education. Meantime we do not see how God is 
educating them, and educating us too, in this his great 
school, — the world. The earth is God's school, where men 
are sent for seventy years, more or less, to be educated for 
the world beyond. All souls are sent to this school ; all 
enjoy its opportunities. The poor, who cannot go to our 



ALL SOULS ARE GOD'S. 185 

schools ; the wretched and the forlorn, who, we think, are 
without means of culture, — are perhaps better taught than we 
are in God's great university. The principal teachers in this 
school are three, — nature, events, and labor. Nature re- 
ceives the new-born child, shows him her picture-book, and 
teaches him his alphabet with simple sights and sounds. 
She has a wonderful apparatus, and teaches everything, and 
illustrates everything she teaches by experiments. She lets 
him handle wood, water, stones ; shows him animals and 
birds, insects and fishes ; and so familiarizes his mind with 
a fixed order, with permanent law, with cause and effect, 
substance and form, space and time. Happy are the children 
who can go the most to Mother Nature, and learn the most 
in her dame school. The little prince was wise who threw 
aside his fine playthings, and wished to go out and play in 
the beautiful mud. 

The next teacher in God's school is labor. That which 
men call the primal curse, is, in fact, one of our greatest 
blessings. Those who are called the fortunate classes, be- 
cause they are exempt from the necessity of toil, are, for 
that very reason, the most unfortunate. Work gives health 
of body and health of mind, and is the great means of de- 
veloping character. Nature is the teacher of the intellect, 
but labor forms the character. Nature makes us acquainted 
with facts and laws ; but labor teaches tenacity of purpose, 
perseverance in action, decision, resolution, and self-respect. 
The man who has done a day's work well, respects himself, 
has contentment in his heart, and knows himself, however 
humble his sphere, to be in that sphere essential. It is bad 
that men should be overburdened or broken by toil ; bad that 
children, whom God has sent to his school of Nature, should 
be sent too early into the school of work : but the necessity 
of daily labor is a gift to the race, the value of which we 
can scarcely estimate. If only a few were allowed to work, 
and the mass of men were condemned to idleness, the world 



136 



ALL SOULS ARE GOD'S. 



would be a Pandemonium, and life a curse ; but it is a gift 
to all, a means of education for all souls. 

Then comes the third teacher, — those events of life which 
come to all, — joy and sorrow, success and disappointment, 
happy love, disappointed affection, bereavement, poverty, 
sickness and recovery, youth, manhood, and old age. 
Through this series of events, all are taken by the great 
teacher — life : these diversify the most monotonous career 
with a wonderful interest. They are sent to deepen the 
nature, to educate the sensibilities. Thus nature teaches the 
intellect, labor strengthens the will, and the experiences of 
life teach the heart. 

For all souls God has provided this costly education. 
What shall we infer from it? If we see a man providing 
an elaborate education for his child, hardening his body by 
exercise and exposure, strengthening his mind by severe 
study, what do we infer from this ? We naturally infer that 
he intends him for a grand career. If he knew that his son 
had a mortal disease which would take him away before 
maturity, would he subject him to this severe discipline? 
Then, when God disciplines us by severe toil and sharp 
sorrow, we may believe that he is thus forming us for a 
great career by and by. 

3. Again : all souls belong to God by redemption. The 
work of Christ is for all : he died for all, the just and the 
unjust, that he might bring them to God. He came to rec- 
oncile all things unto God. Christ did not die for the great 
and the distinguished only, nor for the good and pure only ; 
but for the most humble, neglected, and forlorn. The light 
streaming from his cross reveals in every soul a priceless 
treasure, dear to God, which he will not willingly lose. The 
value of a single soul in the eyes of God has been illustrated 
by the coming of Jesus as in no other way. The recognition 
of this value is a feature peculiar to Christianity. To be 
the means of converting a single soul, to put a single soul in 



ALL SOULS ARE GOD'S. 



137 



the right way, has been considered a sufficient reward for 
the labors of the most devoted genius and the ripest culture ; 
to rescue those who have sunk the lowest in sin and shame 
has been the especial work of the Christian philanthropist ; 
to preach the loftiest truths of the gospel to the most debased 
and savage tribes in the far Pacific has been the chosen work 
of the Christian missionary. In this they have caught the 
spirit of the gospel. God said, 44 I will send my Son." He 
chose the loftiest being for the lowliest work, and thus taught 
us how he values the redemption of that soul which is the 
heritage of all. 

Now, if a man, apparently very humble, and far gone in, 
disease, should be picked up in the street, and sent to the 
almshouse to die, and then, if immediately there should 
arrive some eminent person — say the governor or president 
— to visit him, bringing from a distance the first medical 
assistance, regardless of cost, we should say, "This man's 
life must be very precious : something very important must 
depend upon it." But, now, this is what God has done, 
only infinitely more, for all souls. He must, therefore, see 
in them something of priceless value. He does not wish to 
lose one. We are willing recklessly to injure or ruin our 
own soul for the most trifling gratification ; but, in so doing, 
we destroy that which belongs to God, and which he prizes 
most highly. 

4. Lastly, in the future life, all souls will belong to God. 

The differences of life disappear at the grave, and all be- 
come equal again there. Then the outward clothing of 
rank, of earthly position, high or low, is laid aside, and each 
enters the presence of God, alone, as an immortal soul. 
Then we go to judgment and to retribution. But the judg- 
ments and retributions of eternity are for the same object as 
the education of time : they are to complete the work left 
unfinished here. In God's house above are many mansions, 
suited to every one's condition. Each will find the place 



138 



ALL SOULS ARE GOD'S. 



where he belongs ; each will find the discipline which he 
needs. Judas went to his place, the place which he needed, 
where it was best for him to go ; and the apostle Paul went 
to his place, the place best suited for him. The result of life 
with one man has fitted him for glory and honor ; another is 
only fitted for outer darkness : but each will have what is 
best for him. We may throw ourselves away ; but God will 
not throw us away. We belong to him still ; and he "gath- 
ers up the fragments which remain, that nothing be lost." 
In order to become pure, we may need sharp suffering ; and 
then God will not hesitate to inflict it. In the other life, as 
- in this, he will chasten us, not for his pleasure, but for our 
profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness. It is thus 
that God's love for the soul, and its worth, appear eminently, 
in that he will not let us destroy ourselves. When we pass 
into the other world, those who are ready, and have on the 
wedding-garment, will go in to the supper. They will find 
themselves in a more exalted state of being, where the facul- 
ties of the body are exalted and spiritualized, and the powers 
of the soul are heightened ; where a higher truth, a nobler 
beauty, a larger love, feed the immortal faculties with a 
divine nourishment ; where our imperfect knowledge will 
be swallowed up in larger insight ; and communion with 
great souls, in an atmosphere of love, shall quicken us for 
endless progress. Then faith, hope, and love will abide, — 
faith leading to sight, hope urging to progress, and love 
enabling us to work with Christ for the redemption of the 
race. 

" All souls are mine." Blessed declaration of the God- 
inspired Ezekiel ! All souls — of the great and the humble, 
the rich and the poor, the wise and the ignorant, the king 
and the slave, the pure child and the abandoned woman, the 
soul of St. John and the soul of Judas Iscariot, — all belong 
to God. He will take care of what is his : he will leave no 
child orphaned. Those who are trodden down and forsaken 



ALL SOULS ARE GOD'S. 



139 



in this world, — he watches their sorrowful lives, and will 
cause them to bring forth fruit at last. The hardened and 
selhsh worldling, who mocks at the higher law, and knows 
no rule but his own miserable rule of temporal expediency, 
— God will teach him yet to know and revere immortal 
truth and heavenly virtue. 

Thus does God love all souls with a universal, unwearied, 
untired affection ; thus did Christ love all souls, gathering 
around him, by his deep interest in that vital centre of life, 
the publicans, Pharisees, and sinners, the pious and the pro- 
fane. And thus, if we are Christians, we shall love all 
souls ; calling no man common or unclean ; believing in the 
brotherhood and sisterhood of the race ; finding something 
good in every one, — a vital seed of nobleness in the most 
deadened bosom ; and, in thus loving other souls, our own 
souls will be blessed. While we forget ourselves, God will 
remember us ; while we seek to save others, we, too, shall 
be safe. 

Let us rejoice, friends, in these great hopes. Let us bless 
God for his creating, educating, and saving love. Let us 
rejoice that the lost souls — lost to earth, lost to virtue, lost 
to human uses here — are not lost to God ; that he still holds 
them in his hand. Let us rejoice that those who will not be 
led to him by blessings and joy shall be led to him by terror, 
pain, and awful suffering. Let us rejoice that the glory of 
heaven and the lurid fires of hell shall both serve God, — 
both work together for God. Let us rejoice in the great 
communion of souls ; saints and sinners, — one great family, 
to be led by Christ to his Father. And let the humble ones 
of earth, forgotten by men, know that they are remembered 
by God, — the nameless martyrs, the uncelebrated lives, all 
recorded in the Great Book above. 

"The thousands, that, uncheered by praise, 
Have made one offering of their days ; 



ALL SOULS ARE GOD'S. 



For Truth, for Heaven, for Freedom's sake, 
Resigned the bitter cup to take ; 
And silently, in fearless faith, 
Bowing their noble souls to death, — 

" Where sleep they? Woods and sounding waves 
Are silent of those hidden graves. 
Yet what if no light footstep there 
In pilgrim love and awe repair ? 
They sleep in secret; but the sod, 
Unknown to men, is marked of God." 



XIV. 



"THE ACCEPTED TIME." 
2 Cor. vi. 2 : " Now is the accepted time ; now is the day of 

SALVATION." 

IT is a distinction of man to live in the past and the 
future no less than in the present. The discourse of 
reason is to look before and after. Animals, indeed, have 
memory and hope. When a horse whinnies at noon, it 
shows both memory of the past, and hope as regards the 
future. He remembers that he has been fed before at that 
time ; and he is expecting to be fed again. But man can 
live in the past and the future. He can project his soul 
backward or forward, and dwell in memory or hope, till the 
present hour becomes nothing to him. To illustrate this at 
length would be interesting, but is not necessary, and would 
take a whole sermon. Pass, therefore, to a second obser- 
vation. 

Though it is a distinction of man to be able to live in the 
past and future, this is not his highest or best condition. To 
let the past and future pour their consenting streams into his 
present life, is better than to carry his life into the past or 
the future. This proposition I proceed to explain. 

The lowest condition of man is that in which he is wholly 
immersed in the present. This implies the absence of all 
cu^ure. The man's soul is enslaved by immediate circum- 
stances, imprisoned in this square foot of space, in these 
sixty seconds of time. The moment that one begins to 

(141) 



142 



u THE ACCEPTED TIME." 



reflect or to imagine, he goes backward and forward, and so 
escapes from the weight of the present. The moment cul- 
ture begins, we cease to be the slaves of this Now. The 
child studying geography, history, grammar, arithmetic, al- 
ready escapes somewhat from the limitation of the present 
moment. He is away into Europe, or into the time of 
Alexander, or into the still more remote abstractions of 
pure reason. 

The second condition of man is that in which he lives in 
the past or future, or alternately in past, present, and future. 
It is a higher state than the first, but not the highest. To 
escape from the present is better than to be its slave, but not 
so good as to be its master. Some people escape from the 
present by revery. They go into Dreamland or Fairyland, 
and have a good time there ; build castles in the air. — cas- 
tles in Spain. This gives to them a certain feebleness of 
character, incapacitates them for work, weakens their moral 
power. Some people lead a double life, putting only half 
their thought into their action ; having another world of 
favorite imagination where the other half goes. So. many 
persons walk about the world as in a dream. They take no 
interest in the present. It seems to them, as to Hamlet, 
stale, flat, and unprofitable. But duty is in the present ; 
love is in the present ; ail real life is in the present ; and 
both heart, mind, and hand must be weakened by not taking 
hold of the present with energy. Anything which makes us 
indifferent to the dawning day, which makes us glad when 
time passes, which makes us wish it were good that some 
other time might be here, indicates a morbid state. To live 
in dreams of the past, or visions of the future, is sickly. You 
may call it religion, if you will : it is none the less sickly. 
To retire from life into a cloister, in order to meditate upon 
an eternity hereafter, is morbid. To lose our interest in tjie 
present world, thinking about another, is morbid. Anything 
which disqualifies us from our duty is morbid. Symptoms 



" THE ACCEPTED TIME." 



143 



of this disease are when we lose our interest in life and men, 
get into a habit of staying at home, living in one room, 
avoiding society, or even in spending all our time in reading, 
which is one way of getting out of the present into the past. 
A habit of reading may indicate strength or weakness. It 
indicates strength when we read for a purpose ; when read- 
ing is therefore a study ; when we plunge into the past, in 
order to bring something to the present, as the diver learns 
to hold his breath, and go down fifty feet deep, in order to 
bring up pearls. But if we read merely to escape from our 
present life, duty, and work, into another, then it is no more 
creditable to read than it is to recreate ourselves in any other 
way. Of course, we have a right to read as a recreation, 
just as we may take a walk, or amuse ourselves in any other 
way. 

Some people rush from the present into the future on the 
wings of hope. Some fly back from the present into the 
past with the trembling steps of fear. These are visionaries ; 
those are anxious and timid souls. Some step aside into 
Dreamland or into a cloister. People cloister themselves in 
their parlors or their churches, their studies or their clubs, 
their cliques, their parties, their sects. So they escape tim- 
idly, I may say as cowards, from the battle of the present 
hour. For the present hour is always the scene of a great 
battle between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, good 
and evil ; and no one has a right to fly from it into Dream- 
land or Bookland, or even into meditations on a heaven 
w 7 hich God does not deem it well to give us as yet. 

The third and highest condition of human culture, there- 
fore, is that in which man lives in the present, but with a 
life drawn from the past and the future. This is the highest 
point of development, — to bring past and future into the 
present. Herein our religion differs from all other religions, 
and true Christianity differs from all false Christianities. 
Jesus was most conspicuous for this intense realism, bringing 



144 



" THE ACCEPTED TIME." 



all the past of Judaism and all the future of the kingdom 
of heaven into the present moment. " Before Abraham 
was, I am." This is the old historic period identified with 
the present hour. " The hour cometh, and now is," is 
another favorite formula with the Master. The mind of 
the Hebrew race was doubly saturated with glorious his- 
toric reminiscences and glorious prophetic anticipations, with 
ancestral pride and Messianic hope. The wonderful thing in 
the mind of Jesus was, that he could precipitate these re- 
ligious memories and hopes in one crystal form of present 
duty, — into a diamond life sparkling at once from every 
facet with faith, hope, and love. This was the supernatural 
element in Jesus, to be able to bring down heaven upon 
earth ; to make immortality present ; to incarnate the Mes- 
sianic hope in his own life ; and to be, as he said, in heaven 
and upon earth at the same moment. " No man hath 
ascended into heaven, save he that came down from heaven ; 
even the son of man who is in heaven." For as our thought, 
when we utter it, comes out of our mind, and yet remains 
in our mind ; so Jesus came down from heaven into com- 
munion with man, while inwardly he remained in heaven in 
constant communion with God. 

The miracle of his life is to make the supernatural, natu- 
ral ; the infinite, finite ; the past and future, present ; to 
bring God's kingdom upon earth, and to show his will done 
here as in heaven. I call it a miracle, because not only no 
other religion ever accomplished it ; but, even after it has 
been accomplished by Jesus, his Church has never realized it. 
The Church to-day does not comprehend it. On the one 
hand, in spite of his own words, a part of the Church re- 
fuses to accept a present salvation, and transfers it all to the 
other world ; and, on the other hand, those who do accept 
it make of it a mere commonplace morality, and make of 
him only a teacher of ethics. 

But " the hour cometh, and now is," when we shall under- 



" THE ACCEPTED TIME." 



145 



stand Christianity better, and see that now is the day of sal- 
vation. In other words, we shall see that the work of the 
gospel is to show to us God present with us ; to show that 
Christ is " Immanuel," God with us ; to show that heaven 
and hell are here ; that Christian salvation is a present sal- 
vation ; that Christ saves us only as he is a present Saviour ; 
that immortality must begin now ; that we must have eter- 
nal life abiding in us while in this world. 

I think some of our writers make a great mistake in un- 
dervaluing the historic and actual life of Jesus. An inter- 
esting book has been lately published by a distinguished gen- 
eral officer in the United States service, which resolves the 
life of Jesus into symbols.* History disappears in a system 
of ideas. Now, the ideal, by itself, is no more reality than 
the actual by itself. I mean to say, that ideas which never 
have been incorporated, never have been put in action, are, 
as yet, not vital. They do not affect the soul of men as 
seed. They do not tend to progress. But whenever an 
idea is acted out, whenever a great truth is really lived, it 
becomes a source of life to multitudes. If the Gospels, 
therefore, do not give an account of an actual life, they are 
no more the seeds of life to the world than Spenser's " Fairy 
Queen," or any other romance containing ideas of truth and 
beauty. It is not till the great truth becomes a great fact 
that it really helps us to live it. Suppose that General 

* The book by Major General Hitchcock, <; Christ the Spirit," is 
the most recent illustration of that habit of mind which has existed in 
all ages of the Christian Church, and in nearly all religions of men, 
to idealize history into symbols. This tendency is represented by 
Philo, as regards Judaism ; and in Christianity by a long series of 
mystical writers, — including such names as Savonarola and Sweden- 
borg, — who remind us of what Kant says of Plato ("Kritik der 
reinen Vernunft; Einleitung ") : " The dove, in his free flight, feel- 
ing the resistance of the air, might imagine that it would move more 
easily in a vacuum. So did Plato leave the world of reality, passing 
on the wings of ideas into the empty spaces of pure intelligence." 
10 



146 



" THE ACCEPTED TIME." 



Washington were a myth or a symbol, the invention of some 
meditative sage : would his story affect lis as it does ? I 
read, in novels and romances, tales of heroism and devo- 
tion ; but the sight of one heroic deed, the knowledge of one 
generous action, the coming in contact with one man or 
woman who is really living nobly, does me more good than 
a whole library of romantic tales. Suppose one should 
learn to-day that the story of Savonarola, of Luther, of 
Joan of Arc, of John Brown, of Theodore Winthrop, were 
merely symbolic stories ; that no such lives had ever actually 
been lived ; that no such sufferings had ever actually been 
borne: should we not lose something? Therefore it seems 
to me wonderful that any speculation can so undervalue 
history as to say, that if the story of Jesus be a symbol 
only, and not a fact, it can do as much good as now. 

Christ, therefore, to be of any use to us, must be a present 
Christ. The historic Christ of the New Testament, and the 
ideal Christ of Christian anticipation, must be realized in 
the present, in order to help us. The hope of glory is Christ 
within us. The study of the Gospels is necessary to make 
us acquainted with Jesus as a person ; but this person must 
become our friend in all our daily walk, in order to save us 
from evil and sin. He foretold that he would come again as 
a Holy Spirit. We must feel him present, as the Holy 
Spirit, in society, in history, in providence, our own heart. 
We must feel him present in all true reform, in all coura- 
geous struggle, in all noble endeavor. We must believe in his 
resurrection and ascension as well as in his death. He did 
not die on the cross : he lives, and has risen to that higher 
spiritual state in which he can be present and active to-day. 

Some good people tell us that Christ is to come in 1868, 
in some outward form ; and think that they do us a favor by 
that information. But if Christ is not here now, his com- 
ing in 1868 will do us little good. And as to his coming in 
some outward shape, I, for my own part, would say with 



" THE ACCEPTED TIME." 



147 



Paul, that I take less interest in that than in his coming as 
spirit and power in society, history, and life.* No doubt he 
will come in 1868, but only as he is coming now in 1861 ; j 
and those who do not see him now will not see him then. I 
see Christ visible to-day. I see him plainly, coming in these 
magnificent events of the present hour. I see him in this 
coming emancipation of a great people, so long tied down by 
compromises, and fastened to the dead corpse of corrupt and 
corrupting institutions. If Christ is not here, where can he 
be? If he is not in this fine awakening of a nation, in this 
new crisis of history, in this inspiration which bears all our 
youth onward to battle for their country, and makes their 
life poor until it can be given for justice, law, and freedom ; 
if he is not here with us in sympathy, influence, and help, — 
then he has changed from the Christ whose holy feet walked 
over the acres of Palestine, bearing sympathy to earth's sor- 
rows, and help to mortal weakness and sin. Do not talk of 
1868. Let us see Christ here in the slave whose fetters are 
breaking ; here in the nation which is arising out of selfish- 
ness into generosity. Christ is coming in 1868 ; but he is 
coming in the form of the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the 
stranger, the sick, and the prisoner. Find these, and you 
find him. For salvation, too, to be of any use to us, must be 
a present salvation. It is not enough that I passed through 
some experience, and repented, and was converted, and born 
again last year. I must repent to-day ; I must be converted 
to-day ; I must be born again to-day. What I did yesterday 
answered for yesterday, but does not answer for to-day. Nor 
can I hope to be saved in the future, except as I am saved 
now. Immortality must begin here. God is here ; Christ 
is here ; his Holy Spirit is here ; all good angels are here ; 



* Paul says, " Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet 
now henceforth know we him no more." 

t This sermon was preached in the first year of the war. 



148 



" THE ACCEPTED TIME." 



all truth is here ; and I can be saved now by trusting in God 
as my Father and my Friend. 

We have read the story of a man, who, led by some whim, 
left his home, and went into another street, and there lived 
by himself secretly for many years. Every evening he went 
by his house, and looked into the windows, and saw his 
family sitting together, but did not go in ; till at last, after 
many years, passing the house as usual, he turned up the 
steps, opened the door, and entered, and was once again re- 
ceived into the circle of sweet love. We wonder at the folly 
which can thus throw away years of affection and joy ; but 
we do just so. We pass by, day after day, the home of our 
soul ; we postpone, day after day, entering into the love of 
God and Christ. So we let years go by : but, at last, we 
determine to go in ; and then, in the peace of forgiven sin, 
in the sense of God's fatherly love, in the consciousness of 
living in our true home, we wonder that we postponed it so 
long ; consented so long, in our folly, to live away from God, 
and so away from heaven. 

For, in fine, heaven and hell are both present also : they 
are both here. 

For what is hell, and what is heaven ? Hell is absence 
from God : heaven is the presence of God. To turn away 
from God in our wilful choice ; to separate ourselves from 
him in our selfishness ; to go, like the prodigal, into a far 
country, — that is hell. It carries with it the famine of the 
soul, the mortal hunger, the decay and death of all our best 
nature. We are dead while we live, when we are away 
from God : there is no real satisfaction in anything. And 
what is heaven but to return to God, and so find satisfaction 
in everything ; to cease from selfish ends ; to give ourselves 
up to noble and true purposes ! Those who live pure and 
generous lives have tasted already " the powers of the world 
to come." 

Thus Christ glorifies the present, throwing over it the 



" THE ACCEPTED TIME." 



149 



ideal glow of the past, and the roseate beauty of the future. 
He transfigures the present by the great idea of beauty, and 
the inspiration of God's love. As he appeared on the 
mountain in glory, talking with Moses and Elias of the 
things belonging to the kingdom of heaven, so he summons 
the past to talk with him in the present concerning the future. 
Therefore there is no condition of life so humble, no work of 
life so common, no sphere of duty so low, as not to grow full 
of grace and charm as Christ comes to it. Intense light 
thrown upon a piece of common earth, in a microscope, 
changes it into a fairyland of beauty : so the intense light of 
Christian truth beautifies the most insignificant moment 
of our life. We feel that now is the accepted time, that 
now is the day of salvation. The present moment becomes 
infinitely interesting. We cease to meditate on the past, or 
dream about the future : the now is sufficient for us. 

" No longer, forward or behind, 
I look in hope or fear ; 
But, grateful, take the good I find, 
The best of now and here. 

" And so the shadows fall apart, 
And so the west winds play; 
And all the windows of my heart 
I open to the day." 



XY. 



"WHEN HE CAME TO HIMSELF." 
Luke xv. 17: ' ; Axd when he came to himsele." 

THIS is rather a remarkable expression. How can one 
come to himself? Are we not always with ourselves? 
Do we ever go away from ourselves ? We may go away 
from home, friends, and native land ; we may go from God 
and heaven, and love and peace ; we may go away from truth 
into falsehood, from innocence into crime : but can we ever 
go away from ourselves? According to the Horatian verse, 
never. ; * TTho. by flying his country, can escape himself? " 
says Horace. And, if we analyze the expression, it grows 
more difficult to comprehend. He came to himself." 
TTho was the ••he" that came to himself? Was it the soul 
that came to the body, or the body to the soul, or the per- 
sonality, the personal will, which came to the spirit? How 
can the expression be understood or explained by any mental 
or moral science ? 

And yet this phrase is one which is quite common, found 
in many languages ; and we all feel it to be singularly ap- 
propriate. In this passage, it is exactly the same in Greek 
as in English ; and it is a sort of expression so universal, 
that there is evidently some reality of human experience 
lying beneath it. Perhaps we can understand this by seeing 
under what circumstances the expression is used. 

TVhy do we say that a person •* has come to himself" 
when he recovers his consciousness after having fainted 

(150) 



" WHEN HE CAME TO HIMSELF." 



151 



away, after a trance, after being stunned by a blow, after 
delirium? It is because he has become self-conscious: he 
has obtained possession of his faculties ; ceases to live a 
merely instinctive life, and lives a conscious moral life. We 
thus recognize that the true self in man is the power of self- 
consciousness and self-direction. As long as one has neither 
self-consciousness nor self-direction, he is out of himself ; 
but, when he has this self-possession, he has come to him- 
self, he has become himself. 

I recollect a fact told me once by a friend of mine, who 
was a sailor, which I have always thought a curious experi- 
ence, showing what kind of central consciousness in the soul 
makes the essential self in man. He was one night in a ter- 
rible thunder-storm in the Gulf Stream. The bolts of light- 
ning fell all around the vessel ; so that, momently expecting 
it would be struck, the captain told the crew to stay forward 
and aft, away from the masts. My friend, who was the 
mate of the vessel, thought he heard a sail beginning to 
flap, and went to the foot of the mainmast to look up through 
the solid darkness, if perchance he might see what it was. 
At that moment, the vessel was struck, and he fell senseless. 
The effect of the shock on the vessel was to make it, for a 
moment, lose its way ; and the next wave rushed over the 
deck, washing him to the lee scuppers. Probably the bath 
saved his life. The men, coming aft to see what had hap- 
pened, stumbled over him ; and he was taken below, and 
laid in a berth. An hour or two after, the captain came 
down with a lantern, and, looking at him, spoke to him. 
He looked at the captain, struggled to collect himself, and at 
last said, after a great effort of reason, " I am somebody." 
That was the first sign that he had come to himself. He 
came out of chaos to individuality. He was conscious that 
he was a person. Next, after another effort, he took another 
intellectual step, and said, 44 1 am somewhere." He first 
individualized himself, then localized himself. First per- 



152 



" WHEN HE CAME TO HIMSELF." 



sonality, then space. First one's self, then the outward 
world ; or, as I suppose the German metaphysicians would 
say, first the " I," and then the " Not I." 

Something like this happens when we come out of a 
dream. In sleep, particularly if it be deep and solid, if we 
have plunged clear down into the depths of a profound sleep, 
to awake from it is like a resurrection from the dead. We 
do not, for a moment, know where we are ; but I think that 
we do not go so far out of ourselves in sleep as this young 
man did who was struck by lightning. We say when we 
awake, "I am somewhere : where am I?" But we do not 
say, " I am some one." In dreams we are still ourselves ; 
but we cease to be localized. Place comes and goes around 
us. The scene shifts : we are now at home ; a moment 
after, somewhere far off ; and we are not surprised. Espe- 
cially, in sleep, the self-directing will is relieved from duty, 
the sense of responsibility ceases : we are free from all per- 
manent care, all anxiety about the work of our daily life. 
The dignity and duty of choice are both temporarily removed. 
This is what really makes sleep a rest : it rests the body by 
relaxing the steady tension of the will over the muscles ; but 
it rests the soul more by taking off the steady pressure of 
purpose and obligation from the mind and heart. We cease 
to be responsible while we are asleep, — that rests us. 
Hence, in our dreams, we often do things with very little 
remorse that would shock our conscience when awake. 
Gentle persons dream that they commit murder, and do not 
feel at all unhappy about it. Therefore sleep rests the mind 
as well as the body, but therefore also it is a lower state ; 
and we come to ourselves when we wake, by taking up the 
duty and dignity of conscientious purpose. 

" Coming to one's self," then, is a phrase which very well 
expresses the collecting of all one's powers and faculties 
round their true centre of self-consciousness and self-direc- 
tion. You have seen in water the image of the sun or 



" WHEN HE CAME TO HDISELF. 



153 



moon. Something disturbs the surface of the water, and 
breaks it into waves. Immediately the image is shattered 
in pieces, and goes apart, the bright fragments oscillating to 
and fro on the undulating surface ; but gradually, as the 
waves subside, these fragments of the sun's image begin to 
come together again. They come nearer and nearer, each 
approaching its proper place, until at last, when the disturbed 
water has become again smooth, the image of the sun reap- 
pears once more round and distinct as at first. It has come 
to itself. 

So man comes to himself after the distraction of passion, 
after the stupor of self-indulgence, after the conscience has 
been disturbed by selfish sophisms. He comes to himself 
when the broken image of God, reflected in the inward mir- 
ror of conscience, has again grown distinct and clear within. 
He comes to himself when all his faculties gather subser- 
viently around their true centre ; when the soul is on its 
throne, and truth is loved and obeyed ; and Christ, who is 
God's love in the heart, helps us to forget ourselves, and to 
love others. The soul of man comes to its true self in 
humility, in obedience, in truthfulness, in generous affection : 
it is out of itself till then. Thus sin is represented in our 
text as insanity, as a temporary delirium, and man as only 
perfectly sane when he is a child of God. and desirous, if he 
cannot be a son loving his Father, to be at least a servant 
obeying him. 

Man's true self, accordingly, is good. Man's nature is 
not bad, but good. When man is himself, as God made 
him and meant him, he i 5 good. Sin is an unnatural state : 
it is a derangement. We are all. therefore, when sinners, 
partially insane. We are in a delirium till we come to truth 
and love. I think that we all sometimes feel this. If you 
look back to those hours of life when you were in your best 
state of mind ; when you were most humble, most penitent, 
most trusting, most loving ; when selfishness seemed* killed 



154 



"WHEN HE CAME TO HIMSELF." 



down to its roots ; when passion, and love of pleasure, and 
worldliness, were checked by some great sorrow ; when, 
under the influence of truth and goodness, you looked at life 
with earnest eyes. — did it not seem as if you were now 
more sane? as if you were not only better, but also wiser? 
This, you said, is the true state. I am now really myself. 
Every other condition is morbid : this is healthy. Every 
other state is feverish : it is derangement : this is true order, 
this is self-possession, this is being whole. It is, therefore, 
not true to say that man by nature is a child of sin. Man 
by nature is a child of God, and only by disease is a child 
of sin. Sin is abnormal. Goodness is his proper and 
healthy condition. 

i; By our proper motion we ascend 
Up to our native height : descent and fall 
To us is adverse." 

The true life of man is the full activity of all his powers, 
each in its place and order ; but this fulness of manhood 
comes only when man is self-poised, self-possessed, and self- 
controlled, according to the divine laws. All disobedience 
to God's laws reacts on the soul, and brings famine and 
want to some part of the nature. It is always derangement, 
insanity, disease. Xo one can grow, with a full develop- 
ment of his nature, except according to law. All self-indul- 
gence tends to disease and weakness. 

The selfish man of the world, for example, is insane and 
sick. He thinks, because he devotes himself to his own pri- 
vate ends, that he will achieve success. He says, " Each 
for himself: no one can succeed in any other way." He 
thinks that very wise. So he sets aside strict conscience, 
sets aside generosity, and gives all his energy to his own 
advancement. Politician, lawyer, merchant, clergyman, 
writer, whatever he is, he only thinks how he can get fame, 
position, power, respect, ability, wealth, for himself alone. 



"WHEN HE CAME TO HIMSELF." 



155 



For a time, he seems to succeed. He rises higher and 
higher. He attains position. He is distinguished. He has 
influence. He has fame. But this is all a diseased growth. 
There is a famine within. He is conscious himself, and 
others are also conscious, of some fatal and essential defi- 
ciency. Perhaps you cannot tell what it is, but you feel that 
there is something wrong. The real difficulty is, that he is 
inwardly dying. His life is gradually oozing out of him. 
The joy of existence ceases. He does not really enjoy even 
his own success. Those who look at him find something 
hollow in him. The inevitable law holds him in its relent- 
less grasp. " He who loves his life shall lose it : he who 
loses his life for others shall find it." Selfishness destroys 
the true self. For the true self in man, the highest self, is 
w 7 hen he looks out, not in ; when he thinks of others, not of 
himself ; when he lives for truth, not for personal success, — 
lives for right and justice, for humanity and for God. 

This successful selfish man is " perishing with hunger." 
Happy if he finds it out ; if he has the honesty to say, "J 
perish with hunger" Then he comes to himself. In that 
moment he begins to rise. His true self regains its su- 
premacy. Then he says, ' ; I will go to my Father." All 
irreligion and all false religion are insanity and derange- 
ment. That man only is perfectly healthy in soul w r hose 
heart within is a smooth mirror, reflecting evermore the face 
of God ; but it must be the face of the true God, our Father. 
The face neither of Jupiter nor of Jehovah will suffice: 
neither that of the cold philosophic God, who is only law ; 
nor of the terrible Calvinistic God, who maintains an eternal 
hell, into which he casts his children, and on the door of 
which he whites, " Leave all hope behind, ye w T ho enter 
here." Such religion as this deranges, dwarfs, stupefies, 
and cripples the soul. All imperfect and false religions dis- 
tort man out of himself. 

But the religion of Jesus brings us to ourselves by bringing 



156 



" WHEN HE CAME TO HIMSELF." 



us to our Father. It shows us our God, as the Father, who 
sees us a great way off as soon as we turn to him, and kisses 
us with the sweet inward kiss of peace in the heart as soon 
as we humble ourselves before the truth and right. This 
image of God in the heart makes us sane, and keeps us so. 
We know where to go now at all times. We have a friend 
who knows us better than we know ourselves,- loves us better 
than we love ourselves, helps us when we cannot help our- 
selves, forgives us when we cannot forgive ourselves, and, in 
the midst of oar mighty despair, breathes round our heart 
the perfumed breath of a new and divine hope. 

When you know God as he is, then you have come to 
yourself ; then you are safe. There is no more danger then : 
all your faculties then unfold in their true method and order : 
we see that life is sweet, that duty is attractive, that truth is 
inspiration, that love is divine, that death 

"Is but a covered way 
That opens into light, 
Wherein no blinded child can stray 
Beyond the Father's sight." 

For, with God in the heart, you always feel at home. I do 
not think we feel at home always with our friends. Some 
persons you are at home with intellectually : you feel that 
you have come to yourself intellectually when talking with 
them ; they excite and bring out your best intellectual facul- 
ties. With others, you are at home socially : you come to 
yourself socially in their presence ; they are sympathizing, 
uncritical ; they do not censure you ; they are a sort of sunny 
atmosphere, where, in social hours, you expand and blossom 
out, and rest yourself. Then you are at home with others in- 
dustrially : you can work with them ; they bring out all your 
practical power ; you come to yourself as a worker in their 
society. Then you are at home politically with others : you 
sympathize with them, and they with you, in political ideas. 



" WHEN HE CAME TO HIMSELF." 



157 



With others you come to yourself iu religious hours : they 
and you are in religious sympathy. But he who has come 
to God as his own Father and Friend, who has that image 
in his heart, is always at home, and always himself, in that 
presence. He does not come to God to kneel, to bend, to 
repent, to say words of prayer and praise : but when he is 
w T ell and w 7 hen he is sick ; when he is doing right or going 
wrong ; when he is at work or at play, — he looks inward ; 
he feels the strengthening, guiding, helping hand ; he hears 
the loving, tender, warning voice ; and he comes to himself. 
He stands erect in the fulness of his manhood. What can 
he fear? He has God in his heart. 

Look abroad to-day on Nature.* What is this marvellous 
change which has come over it ? Everywhere is life, grow r th, 
beauty : the vast forests are stirred in all their awful depths, 
over the great continent, by this invisible advent of divine 
life which we call Spring. Every one of their million mil- 
lion buds is stirred, and swells, and shakes out its tender 
leaves to the warm air. Every prairie covers its ocean-like 
surface with grass and flowers. Not a w T eed which creeps 
but feels it ; not an insect beneath the sod but feels it. The 
great pine-woods of Maine rejoice, and clap their hands ; 
and the majestic mountains, lifting their vast forms into the 
silent depths of the upper air, — great sentinels, who stand 
overlooking the continents, from age to age, to watch the 
progress of human history, — all are softened and vivified by 
the Spring. What is this mighty change ? It is only that 
the earth has lifted itself towards the sun. The earth has 
come to itself, — to its true self ; for its true self is in making 
itself the fountain of all this great flood of life. 

And so man comes to himself when he turns himself to 
God : and, when he does this, he, too, will bring forth fruits 
and flowers ; he will become full, all through and through, 

* This sermon was preached in the Spring. 



158 



" WHEN HE CAME TO HIMSELF." 



with productive life ; he will be the son of man, because son 
of God ; he will be filled with all the fulness of manhood, 
because filled with all the fulness of Godhead. The earth 
comes to itself when it comes to the sun ; man comes to 
himself when he comes to God ; society comes to itself when 
it obeys the divine law, and calls no man common or un- 
clean, but honors the weak, and helps the feeble, and com- 
forts the sad, and cures the sick ; the Church comes to 
itself when it ceases to dogmatize about doctrine, to make 
proselytes to its party, or to make converts by terror and 
persuasion, — when it devotes itself to showing God, the 
Father of Christ, to the heart, intellect, and conscience of 
man, bringing the world thus to God. 

A nation, also, comes to itself, when, instead of devoting 
itself to mere gain and outward prosperity, it is willing tp 
sacrifice these for the sake of its great ideas ; when it re- 
nounces peace and prosperity for the sake of justice, right, 
humanity. Oar people, in the midst of this terrible storm 
of war, are more truly themselves than they ever were 
before : they have come to self-consciousness. Like my 
poor friend, the nation says, coming to itself, " I am- some- 
body, and I am somewhere. I am a nation with ideas and 
duties, and I am here to do them." And that is what it has 
not said before for the last thirty or forty years. Patriotism 
is the self-consciousness of a nation ; and while we only were 
individuals, struggling for our own selfish good, we had no 
patriotism, and could have none. 

When men wish to try the force of a cannon, and the 
momentum of its ball, there are two methods by which they 
do it. They suspend a heavy pendulum of iron and wood 
weighing several tons, and shoot the ball against it ; then 
they determine the force of the ball by seeing how far the 
pendulum swings out of the perpendicular by the impact of 
the shot. Or else they suspend the gun itself in a pendu- 
lum ; and, when it is fired, see how far the recoil causes the 



" WHEN HE CAME TO HIMSELF." 



159 



pendulum in which it hangs to swing back out of the per- 
pendicular. Xow. it is found that the result is almost ex- 
actly the same in the two cases. The gun-pendulum gives 
precisely the same result as the ballistic-pendulum ; that is 
to say, the recoil of the gun is exactly equal to the force with 
which it projects the ball. So also it is with man's every 
action. Action and reaction are equal in our life. ; * Draw 
nigh to God. and he draws nigh to you." i; Arise, and go to 
your Father," and your Father comes to you. u Give, and 
it shall be given." Do good to others, and love comes back 
to fill your own heart with joy. But seek a selfish good, and 
you lose yourself. Try to live for yourself alone, and you go 
out of yourself; you lose your self-poise, your self-conscious- 
ness, your self-control. 

Let us, then, come to ourselves by coming to God ; by obey- 
ing him ; by living for his truth ; by giving ourselves to true 
and just ends ; by filling life with nobleness, truth, purity, 
and love. 



XVI. 

THE CHEERFUL GIVER. 

2 Cor. ix. 7 : " God loveth a cheerful giver." 

" A LMSG1VING- and prayer," says the Koran, "are the 
XA_ two wings of the soul, by means of which it flies to 
heaven. The soul cannot mount with either by itself, any 
more than the bird can fly with one wing." This is a very 
good saying, if it means that faith and works must go togeth- 
er, — faith without works being dead, and works without 
faith being machinery which has never been alive. 

The Jewish Scriptures also lay great stress on almsgiving. 
" He who hath pity on the poor lendeth to the Lord," says 
the proverb. 

But, according to Christianity, it is not enough to give : 
the question is hoiv to give. The spirit in which one gives 
is the important thing. A man may give as the Pharisee, 
who sounded a trumpet before him ; or he may give, not let- 
ting his left hand know what his right hand doeth. Men 
may give because they think ' they ought, though they had 
rather not ; or because they are expected to give, and will 
be considered mean if they do not ; or because everybody 
else is giving, and they don't like to be singular. They may 
give grudgingly, and scold about it, and say, " they have to 
give all the time ; " or they may give cheerfully, promptly, 
joyfully, lovingly, just as if it was the pleasantest thing in 
the world to do, as indeed it is. 

However, giving money is not the only thing I am to speak 

(160) 



THE CHEERFUL GIYER. 



161 



of this morning. I shall say a word of that, and then speak 
of other ways of giving. But, in all our giving, we must 
give, " not grudgingly, nor of necessity ; for God loves a 
cheerful giver." 

Christianity did not invent giving. Giving is a luxury 
which has been enjoyed in all ages, religions, and countries. 
The Humane Society in Massachusetts has built huts on the 
south side of Cape Cod, where ships often go ashore in win- 
ter ; and have put straw and firewood in them, and other 
comforts for the poor people who have need. But the 
Brahmin Gangooly tells us that the Hindoos, too, practise a 
wayside hospitality. Private persons build cottages by the 
side of the roads where the tired passengers refresh them- 
selves. Every cottage has a man hired to keep it, and to 
ask the passer-by to walk in, and be rested. The Brahmins 
do not often go there, for they do not think it quite respect- 
able to go to such places ; but low-caste travellers go in, and 
are entertained wdth sugar, pease, and cold water ; and even 
large tubs of water are put outside for the cattle to drink. 

So you see that humanity and hospitality are not Chris- 
tian inventions. They were invented when God Almighty 
invented man, and put into him such a complex host of 
tendencies, reaching out in all directions, some downward to 
the earth, some upward to the skies, some abroad towards 
his fellow-man. Self-love was put into him, but sympathy 
to balance it ; freedom was given him, but something fatal 
to balance it ; the love of getting, but the love of giving 
too ; the love of keeping to himself, and the love of helping 
others. 

AVhat, then, is specially Christian in giving? I think it is 
love, — love to God and man, blending in one, in every gift ; 
and love is always a cheerful giver. Love does not grumble 
at being called on ever so often. Love does not merely give 
what is necessary or expected : it chooses to surprise by 
some unexpected present, — something entirely uncalled for. 
11 



162 



THE CHEERFUL GIVER. 



Suppose you should meet a lover going with a magnificent 
bunch of roses to give to the lady to whom he was engaged 
yesterday, and should say, "It is not necessary to give so 
many ; you have a dozen roses there, — three or four would 
have been enough ; " or, " Why do you give her that hand- 
somely bound book? one in cloth would answer," — I do 
not think he would thank you for your economical sugges- 
tion. He does not give grudgingly, or of necessity. But 
Mr. Beecher tells us that there are 66 many professing Chris- 
tians who are secretly vexed on account of the charity they 
have to bestow, and the self-denial they have to use. If, in- 
stead of the smooth prayers they do pray, they would speak 
out the things they really feel, they would say, when they 
go home at night, 4 O Lord ! I met a poor wretch of yours 
to-day, a miserable unwashed brat, and I gave him sixpence, 
and I have been sorry for it ever since ; ' or, 4 O Lord ! if I 
had not signed those articles of faith, I might have gone to 
the theatre this evening. Your religion deprives me of a 
great deal of enjoyment : but I mean to stick to it. There 
is no other way of getting into heaven, I suppose.' " 

A gift which expresses love carries gladness with it, and 
leaves gladness behind it ; blessing him who gives, and him 
who takes. Gifts among friends are pleasant : but I do not 
know that there is anything particularly Christian about them ; 
and, unless you take great care, they will suddenly become 
uncomfortable, and lose their first freedom. They should 
never come to be expected. Better to remember what Jesus 
said : " Thou, when thou givest a feast, call not thy rich 
friends and neighbors, who can give to thee again ; but call 
in the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind." On the 
whole, people who love each other had better not give a 
great deal to each other. They have already given the best 
thing in loving each other. 

Suppose, then, Ave give only to strangers and to the poor. 
There is great delight in giving when the gift comes unex- 



THE CHEERFUL GIVER. 



163 



pectedly, and when it goes a great way. But there are 
rocks on all sides ; and here, too, we risk becoming self- 
satisfied and ostentatious in our charities, as though we 
had done some great thing in giving a little of our super- 
fluity : so that what Jesus says, of not letting the left hand 
know what the right hand does, may come in well as a 
wholesome safeguard against such dangers. 

The Church, in its anxiety to do all the good it can, some- 
times forgets its Master's rule. All the missionary and 
Bible societies, and all philanthropic societies, appeal to 
very mixed motives, — to the motive of ostentation, by 
publishing lists of donors in all annual reports ; to the 
motive of necessity, by showing to every man how much 
is expected of him ; to the motive of conscience, by making 
it seem to be an absolute and commanding duty, which it 
would be a sin to shirk ; to the motive of fear, teaching that 
God may punish our unwise and unrighteous economy by 
some sudden retribution ; anol even to the motive of worldly 
gain, hinting that those who give freely for religious objects 
are apt to be largely rewarded in this world. In this way, 
Christians are induced to give much to all these great chari- 
ties ; but they cease to give freely and joyfully. They are 
educated to give grudgingly, and as of necessity, by the very 
process which is taken to induce them to give. 

Now, it seems to me that so much pleasure comes from 
giving in a right way and for right purposes, that the 
Christian Church, by this time, ought to have been educated 
to a large, systematic, ana cheerful benevolence. 

But there are other kinds of giving besides giving money. 
And the second kind of giving I have to mention is giving 
tip. It is making sacrifices of what we like ; giving up to 
conscience and right and truth our desires, ease, and com- 
fort. We are all called on to do this. No one can have his 
way, or do what he would like to do. But, when we give 
up, it is Christian to give up "not grudgingly nor of neces- 
sity." God loves a cheerful giver also here. 



164 



THE CHEERFUL GIVER. 



Many people parade their sacrifices, exaggerate what 
they endure for conscience' sake, and make loud lamenta- 
tion over their hard fate. Jesus says, " Thou, when thou 
fastest, anoint thy head, and wash thy face, that thou appear 
not unto men to fast." Haydon spent his life in painting 
historical pictures, in quarrelling with those who did not like 
them, and in scolding because they were not better liked ; 
crying out against the false taste of the age, that would give 
a ballet-dancer a hundred pounds an evening, and would not 
pay him for his pictures. But I think such complaints show 
that a man has not a pure love for his art. What he chiefly 
wanted were fame and money, not success in his art. I do 
not think that Fra Angelico and Andrea del Sarto, when 
painting, for a few dollars, pictures which cannot be bought 
now for as many thousands, complained that they made too 
great sacrifices for their art. Their art was reward in 
itself. It was reward enough to see the gradual realization 
of their dream ; to see the face of saint or holy martyr or 
tender angelic child come beaming out on their canvas, — 
their heaven-sent inspiration fixed in glory and beauty to 
elevate and sweeten life for generations unborn. Whenever 
a man makes a sacrifice for any great cause or noble end, he 
is repaid, and more than repaid, at the time, if his motive be 
pure. " He has a hundred-fold more now in the present 
time." Therefore, how cheerful and happy are most artists 
in their poverty ! How cheerful and happy are the men and 
women who work in any great humane cause, or contend for 
any unpopular truth ! They are amply compensated for pop- 
ular neglect or odium by the ardent love of a few, by their 
own secure sense of strength, by the consciousness of being 
right, by the foresight of an ultimate triumph of their cause, 
by the knowledge that it is even now triumphant. Only let 
love be the motive, not vanity or pride, and you do not know 
that you are giving up anything. All great discoverers, like 
Columbus, Kane, Parry ; all great inventors, like those who 



THE CHEERFUL GIVER. 



165 



invented printing, cotton machinery, the steam-engine, the 
steamboat, the locomotive, — live in poverty and neglect, 
and, all their lives, are usually called dreamers and vision- 
aries ; but they are very cheerful, for they are in love with 
their ideas. 

If you look over the Harvard College catalogue, you will 
see that there are some families in New England which are 
always represented. In almost every class there is one of 
them, — an Allen or a Stearns or an Abbot or a Parker or a 
Williams ; and many of these names are in Italics, indicat- 
ing that they became clergymen. The same names are also 
in all the other New England colleges. Each one of these 
country clergymen, on a salary of six or eight hundred dol- 
lars, sends all his sons to college, just as he was sent ; and 
they go through the Uuion as ministers, physicians, lawyers, 
merchants, members of Congress, useful men, leading men 
everywhere. How do these clergymen contrive, with their 
small salaries, to send all their sons to college? Why, the 
whole family unite in glad sacrifices and self-denials. When 
the time comes for another son to go, the father sells his 
horse, and gives up his newspaper, with his annual journey 
to the May anniversaries ; the mother makes butter, and 
sells both it and her eggs ; the daughters teach in the pri- 
mary schools in the neighboring towns. All earn a little 
and save a little. The boy himself teaches school in the 
vacation, and perhaps earns something more by teaching the 
idle son of a rich man ; and so he gets through college. Do 
they do this grudgingly? No: they enjoy their sacrifices, 
and do not appear unto the neighbors to fast. Very often 
they go without meat for dinner, or without sugar in their 
tea ; and that, I think, is a better fast in the sight of God 
than eating fish instead of meat because it is Friday, and 
telling all your neighbors that you have been fasting. I do 
not now refer to honest Catholics, who fast in Lent and on 
Friday because they have been taught so, and know no 



166 



THE CHEERFUL GIVER. 



Better ; but to those modern Catholics, who play being Cath- 
olic, and have a sort of aesthetic and sentimental religion, 
made up of poor imitations of a worn-out ritual. 

The third kind of giving is giving ourselves, — giving our- 
selves up to God by the submission and surrender of our 
wills ; or what we call conversion. 

Nothing shows more strikingly how low are the motives 
in much of our religion than the gloomy way in which men 
become religious. Too many are driven to God by fear of 
his anger or of an outward hell. They had rather stay 
away from him if they could, and usually do stay away as 
long as they can. They postpone religion till they are too 
old for anything else, and then lead a religious life, looking 
discontented and gloomy, as if to love God and be loved by 
him was the most disagreeable, though the most necessary, 
of all duties. 

But what is being religious, but always seeing God's in- 
finite love in everything, and loving him all the time ? It is 
seeing his mercy in the sun and sky ; in the hills and plains ; 
in daily life, with its discipline and education ; in the friend- 
ship of our friends ; in our insight into new truths ; in the 
grand opportunities of daily service of the human race which 
he affords us. It is hearing and answering his invitation to 
come to him to be inspired, to be filled with light, to be 
filled with love, to be filled with power. 

Suppose all the little buds and seeds should say, " O, 
dear ! April has come ; and now we shall have to unpack 
ourselves, and go out of these snug little chambers where Ave 
have been sleeping all winter, with nothing to do but rest. 
It is getting warmer and warmer every day. Strange 
thrills pass through us, ' the blind motions of the Spring.' 
But do let us stay as long as we can, shut up here ; for it 
will be a very gloomy thing to go out into the soft summer 
air, and unfold ourselves in the sunlight into tremulous 
leaves, bending stalks, and fragrant flowers." But Nature 



THE CHEERFUL GIVER. 



167 



does not look unhappy in unfolding. 4i It is my faith that 
every flower enjoys the life it breathes." And why, if seeds 
and buds enjoy unfolding in the sun, should not our souls 
enjoy unfolding in the sunlight of our Father's infinite ten- 
derness and perfect love? 

Here are two young folks that have just agreed that life 
w r ould be misery except they can live for each other, and 
give themselves up for each other. Now, suppose that 
these young people, just falling in love, should say, " What 
a very solemn thing it is to have to love each other ; " 
Suppose they should go about with long faces, and put 
off the marriage-day for as many years as they could, 
saying they were afraid they did not love each other well 
enough to be married, and finally, on their wedding-day, feel 
as if they had made some great sacrifice for each other, and 
given up a great deal. That would not be love, would it? 

All human love is typical of divine love. Love is love, 
whether its object be God or man. It is that miracle by 
which we are able to live out of ourselves in another life, — 
absolutely escaping from ourselves. Man is selfish, say the 
wise sceptical philosophers ; but what they do not see is, 
that this centripetal force of self-preservation is balanced by 
a centrifugal force of enthusiastic interest in that which is 
least ourselves. There is native to man a joy in finding 
something other than himself, — a joy in giving himself up 
to the life of another, and thinking only what that other is 
and does and wishes. This is just as natural to man as 
self-love ; and, while self-love is necessary, self-surrender is 
joyful. 

Then why should we give ourselves grudgingly, and as of 
necessity, to the love of God? Why hesitate and tremble, 
and think we are not good enough to love him, or to be 
loved by hiix ; and that it is some great sacrifice we are 
making, whe~ we enter into the sweet peace of our heavenly 
Father's tenderness and grace? 



168 



THE CHEERFUL GIVER. 



I understand thus why Jesus, when he called a disciple, 
wished him to come at once. It was the test of the motive. 
Love does not hesitate. Love leaves all, and follows. Love 
does not say, " Suffer me first to go and bury my father." 
Those disciples who dropped their nets in the boat, and fol- 
lowed Jesus, did not hesitate, calculate, grieve, or look 
gloomy, but were attracted by the words and character of 
Jesus. They did not wish to leave him : they wished to hear 
all he had to say ; and so they went with him, though they 
knew not that in thus going they were to become the great 
apostles and leaders of the human race. 

But there is still another kind of giving which it is hard 
to do cheerfully ; and that is the giving up of those we love, 
when we are invited to let them go to be with God and his 
angels in a higher world. 

Yet love can conquer this reluctance too, — love which 
sets aside private needs, dependence, necessity, for the good 
of the one loved. Affection, purified in the fire of religion, 
can understand Christ when he says, " If ye loved me, ye 
would rejoice, because I go to my Father ; for my Father is 
greater than I." 

This joy comes in the midst of grief to all who have any 
pure love for their friends, — grief with joy inside of it, tears 
with deeper smiles, like the sun breaking through the driving 
rain. It is joy that they are safe ; that their life cannot cease 
to be bright ; that they are above desire and fear ; that they 
have outsoared the shadow of our night ; that they are free 
from the contagion of the world's slow stain ; that they have 
arisen with Jesus, and are with his Father and our Father. 
So that it is not strange or morbid to have with our natural 
grief also a profound joy when those we love best ascend by 
God's invitation to him. Suppose you should meet a friend, 
and, seeing him very happy, should ask the reason, and he 
should say, " It is because my son is to leave me, to go 
where I shall not see him for the next three years." 



THE CHEERFUL GIVER. 



169 



" Well," you would say, " that is strange, and a little un- 
natural, I think, and not quite parental, that you should be 
so glad to lose your son." " Ah ! but understand me," he 
replies. " I am not glad to lose my son : but I have been 
wishing and making exertions to get him a situation which 
is just what he desires and needs ; which is exactly suited to 
him ; which will give him present comfort, together with 
education, and opportunity of progress. It is the very thing 
of all things for him ; and I have just heard that it is given 
to him. This is what I am glad of." " Ah ! " say you : 
u that is not so unnatural, then, after all." 

Gladly, cheerfully, the young men of our land have given 
themselves to their country in its hour of peril. Gladly, 
earnestly, they have gone out to live or to die, as God might 
determine. Gladly, yet with tears, have their mothers, sis- 
ters, wives, friends, bidden them farewell, not wishing to 
hold them back from the heroic and noble work ; and so 
they go, and fall, and rise, — rise into a higher life with 
God, rise . into the great historic figures of our history. 
They stand*forever as illustrious teachers of the old clas- 
sic truth, that it is sweet and honorable to die for one's 
country, — sweet and honorable to die for any truly great 
cause. They shall teach coming generations, if perchance 
we tend once more in times of peace and prosperity to forget 
it, that there is in us all something higher than self-love, 
something stronger than the love of ease ; that God has 
made us all with power to go joyfully to suffer in a good 
cause ; and that, in all such suffering, there is more joy than 
pain. 

But it is not necessary to be a soldier in order to give up 
our life cheerfully to God, truth, and humanity. I stood 
this week by the remains of a young woman, who was a 
cheerful giver of all she had to the cause of God and man. 
She was a teacher for many years in a primary school in 
this city ; and she did not teach, as many do, " grudgingly 



170 



THE CHEERFUL GIVER. 



and of necessity," but put her whole heart into this work, 
and so ennobled it to a sacred mission. The poor little Irish 
children were, to her, Christ's little ones, and each of them 
was precious to her ; so that, systematizing her life, she had 
time every day after school to visit them in order at their 
homes, taking the last first, and sweetly emphasizing with 
special tenderness those whose homes were most forlorn 
and whose surroundings least favorable. If they needed 
clothes or shoes, she always provided them, — going to gen- 
erous people, and telling each case : and, as she knew all 
about it, she never failed ; or, if she failed, she took it from 
her own small salary, with which she had other things to do 
besides taking care of herself. So she was a providence to 
so many little children, who never knew any Christian love 
till they knew hers ; and so she made her school-house a 
divine temple, and her work a holy mission ; and when she 
went last week into the world, " so far, so near," her works 
preceded, attended, and followed her, because she was a 
cheerful giver. 

God has never left himself without a witness anywhere 
in the world. I was reading the other day an account of a 
Roman funeral. When the head of one of the Roman fam- 
ilies died, all his ancestors, whose statues stood in his hall, 
represented by their descendants, w T ent with him to the tomb. 
But first the procession went to the forum; and then the 
representatives of all his great ancestors, each in his appro- 
priate dress, with consular robes, or senatorial toga, as w r orn 
in life, seated themselves by the rostra, in the curule-chairs, 
while the nearest descendant recounted the deeds of the de- 
parted warrior or statesman. Was it not some word of God 
in the hearts of those old Romans which taught them thus 
to make life triumphant over death, and to carry the body to 
the tomb, not talking of what was lost, but of what was won 
and saved? God sends his consolations and his intuitions of 
truth into every race ; and the human hearts of his children 



THE CHEERFUL GIVER. 



171 



cry aloud to him for comfort in their sorrow, from all coun- 
tries and lands, and are fed. 

The rules of Christian bounty are therefore simple. First, 
it should be generous. Jesus says, " Give, hoping for noth- 
ing again." Secondly, it should be modest. Jesus says, 
" When thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what 
thy right hand doeth." Thirdly, it should be spontaneous, 
not waiting to be sought for, or following routine. Many 
persons give only where they are expected to give ; not tak- 
ing the initiative, but always waiting till they are asked. 
But true bounty is like the man in the gospel who went out 
into the highway, and called those in to his feast who ex- 
pected no such invitation, and were no doubt much surprised 
at it. And, fourthly, all true bounty proceeds from love to 
God and man. For, " though I bestow all my goods to feed 
the poor, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing." Such 
are the rules of Christian bounty. And all such bounty 
resembles the divine bounty ; for God gives cheerfully and 
generously. He gives, hoping for nothing again ; for he 
gives to the bad man, who makes no return, as well as to 
the good. His sun shines on the unthankful as well as 
upon the grateful. God gives cheerfully. All nature is full 
of cheer. The gifts of God fall freely and willingly from 
the skies. He also gives a thousand things secretly, as well 
as openly, not letting his left hand know what his right hand 
doeth. He hides his mercies, so that we do not know them 
till long after. He conceals his blessings under the - form of 
evils. Again : the gifts of God are spontaneous. He gives 
without waiting to be asked. He not only answers our 
prayer, but teaches us how to pray. And finally, he gives 
all from love : for love is his essence ; and the explanation 
of all existence, of all history, of all life, is to be found in 
the necessary activity of infinite love. If we would be the 
children of our Father in heaven, let us give as he does. 
Let us give like him in these particulars, and we shall give 



172 



THE CHEERFUL GIVER. 



well, whether we give our means, ourselves, or that which 
is most dear to us. Give cheerfully, not grudgingly : give 
modestly, not ostentatiously ; give generously, not selfishly ; 
give spontaneously, and not as of necessity ; and in all these 
give lovingly. 

Jesus was a man of sorrows. But the greatest artists, in 
painting his features, have recognized that beneath all sor- 
row was a perfect peace. The mediaeval and monkish artists 
gave him an expression of dejection, and of passive submis- 
sion to inevitable ill ; but the greater painters who succeeded 
joined in the Master's face the perfect harmony of sorrow 
and joy, blended and made at one in a divine peace. Sor- 
row is there : for he had always before him human woe and 
sin ; the imperfect present ; the degraded and unworthy con- 
dition of man ; the soul enchained, and held down from its 
great ideal. But a deeper joy is also there, — joy in the 
sense that God was with and in every struggling soul, every 
aspiration for good, every hunger and thirst after righteous- 
ness. These artists are right ; for Jesus began his first 
sermon, not by saying, ; * Cursed are the heretics," but by 
saying, " Blessed are the pure in spirit ; " not by saying, 
"Cursed are the sinners,' 5 but " Blessed are those who 
mourn over their sin." They are blessed while they mourn. 
Like their Master, they are happier in their grief than oth- 
ers in their gladness. 

" That high suffering which we dread 
A higher joy discloses : 
Men saw the thorns on Jesus' brow; 
But angels saw the roses." 

M God loves a cheerful giver." Jesus was his well-beloved 
Son, giving himself cheerfully for man, giving his life a 
ransom for many. God loves us when we follow Jesus, — 
when we are cheerful in our submission ; cheerful in our 



THE CHEERFUL GIVER. 



173 



sacrifice ; cheerful in our trial ; cheerful in our loneliness, 
our bereavement, our sorrow ; cheerful even in our struggle 
with sin, — knowing that we shall come off conquerors, and 
more than conquerors, through him who loved us ; and that 
nothing can separate us from the love of God. 



XVII. 



THE GRACE OF GOD. 
Eph. ii. 8 : "By grace ye are saved, through faith; and that 

NOT OF YOURSELVES : IT IS THE GIFT OF GOD." 

EVERYTHING which we have in this world — all our 
joy, our culture, our powers of body and mind, our 
outward and inward wealth — comes to us in one of two 
ways : it comes with or without our own efforts ; it comes 
as a consequence of what we do, or without any reference to 
what we do ; it comes as retribution, in the form of reward 
and punishment ; or it comes as free gift or grace. When 
good comes to us in consequence of what we have done, w r e 
call it reward ; when evil comes in consequence of what we 
have done, we call it punishment ; when good comes, not in 
consequence of anything we have done, we call it grace, a 
free gift, or mercy ; when evil comes, not in consequence of 
what we have done, we do not call it punishment, but trial, 
discipline, education. 

These are the two sides of life ; these are the two laws 
-which govern us all. Gift and payment, — these are the 
positive and negative poles of human life. 

Now, moralists lay the greatest stress on the law of retri- 
bution, while religious people lay the greatest stress on the 
law of grace. When the question is raised, " How is one to 
be saved?" moralists reply, " By works, by doing one's 
duty, by trying to obey God, by being faithful in all rela- 
tions of life." Religious people, on the contrary, — all 

(174) 



THE GRACE OF GOD. 



175 



Orthodox theologians especially, — say, "Not at all. We 
are not saved by works, but by grace, through faith. It is 
the pure work of God, no work of ours, which saves us, if 
we are saved." 

Now, I shall try to show that the theologians are nearer 
right than the moralists on this point. Herein, I shall, no 
doubt, depart from the traditions of the Unitarians ; for 
Unitarians have, on this subject, usually sided with the 
moralists, and not with the theologians. I shall, however, 
also depart in this discussion somewhat from the theologians, 
because I shall translate the whole matter out of the lan- 
guage of theology into that of common life and daily experi- 
ence. Instead of saying, " By grace we are saved, through 
faith ; and that not of ourselves : it is the gift of God," I 
would put it in this form, as being more intelligible : — 

" Every one, in his heart, desires to be better than he is. 
Every one would like to be, not a bad, but a good man. No 
one desires to be mean, false, cowardly ; but each wishes to 
be noble, generous, pure, true, loving, and beloved. We all 
would like to lead a higher, nobler, better life than we do. 
Now, this better life is what we mean by being saved. It is 
going up, not down ; towards God, not towards Satan ; 
towards the heaven which is the home of all angelic, loving 

O ' CDs, 

souls, not to the hell which is the home of all mean, selfish, 
cruel, hateful, and demoniacal beings." 

Now, the question is, "How are we to go upward? how 
are we to grow better? how are we, in short, to be saved?" 

In passing down the street a day or two since, I saw a 
placard announcing a convention of "all persons who believe 
in the speedy personal coming of Christ ; and who also be- 
lieve in the immortality of the righteous, and destruction of 
the wicked." As I walked on, I said to myself, But who 
are the righteous, and who are the wicked? 

I suppose the righteous are those who do right, and the 
wicked those who do wrong, But who will claim to be 



176 



THE GRACE OF GOD. 



righteous in this sense ? How much better is one man than 
another? The differences between good men and bad men 
are, no doubt, very important as regards our relations to 
each other here. A man who steals and lies and misbehaves 
himself is a very inconvenient neighbor, a very uncomforta- 
ble companion ; but when we come to talk of guilt and of 
merit in the sight of God, and in view of eternal judgment, 
how insignificant the differences between men appear ! Those 
who believe in the final destruction of the wicked must have 
little hope for themselves or any one else : for who is not 
wicked? who can claim to be good? who can pretend to 
have led a perfectly pure, true, generous life? who has been 
good for a year at a time, a month, a day? Good heavens ! 
who can say that he has been, even for an hour, good, in 
any great and noble sense of the word? 

We may judge, then, that we are not likely to be saved 
by our works. If we go up towards heaven, escape from 
evil, and become pure, true, fit companions for angels, and 
fit to be near God, we shall not have made ourselves so. I 
think we shall have to be made so by God. 

By this is not meant that we have nothing to do ourselves 
in order to be saved. I believe that icork is an important 
element of salvation itself. Only I do not think that Ave 
work in order to make God love us ; but, on the contrary, it 
is his love that makes us work. It is the Divine Grace — 
that is, the love and mercy of our Father in heaven — which 
makes us faithful and obedient, inspires us with ardor, and 
helps us to serve him. The grace of" God, which brings 
salvation, has appeared to men ; teaching us, that, denying 
ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, right- 
eously, and godly in this world. That is, our temperance, 
our self-control, is a pure gift of God ; our righteousness, or 
just behavior to men, is a pure gift of God ; and our religion 
is a pure gift. All our work has a gift at the root of it. 
God sows his love in our heart as a seed, out of which, 
after a while, our work grows. 



THE GRACE OF GOD. 



177 



Nearly everything which comes to us in this world comes 
by grace. The doctrine of salvation by God's love was first 
uttered by Jesus, when he said, " Be the children of your 
Father in heaven ; for his sun shines on the evil and the 
good, and he sends his rain on the just and unjust." He 
uttered it again in the parable of the laborer in the vineyard, 
who wrought one hour, but whom God made equal with 
those " who had borne the burden and heat of the day." 

There was a book written by Dr. Combe, called the 
" Constitution of Man," — a very popular work, — the im- 
mense success of which is due to the fact, that it sets forth 
in the fullest form the opposite doctrine of works. " Salva- 
tion by works" is the doctrine of that excellent book. "As 
a man sows, so shall he reap." He who has earned five 
talents shall be over five cities ; he who has earned two 
talents, over two cities ; he who has earned one, over one 
city : strict justice, impartial retribution, unerring law, a 
certain retaliation. This is all perfectly true. It is also 
taught by Jesus ; it was taught by Moses ; it is taught by 
Nature. He who does not work shall not eat ; he who puts 
his finger in the fire shall be burned. Jesus did not come 
to destroy these laws, but to fulfil them. 

In the other world, as in this world, these laws apply. 
There, as here, there will be a perfect retribution. There 
will be rewards and punishments in the other life, just as 
there are here. Those who have done much shall stand 
high ; those who have been faithful in few things shall be 
rulers over many things. Jesus does not set aside any of 
these laws. Combe's book on the Constitution of Man is 
as true in heaven as on earth. 

But, though Christ does not come to destroy the law of 
recompense, he does come to fulfil it. We must work out 
our salvation with fear and trembling ; but we can work it 
out because God works in us to will and to do of his good 
pleasure. That is, God is in our hearts, just as he is in 
12 



178 



THE GRACE OP GOD. 



Nature ; his sun shines in the hearts of bad men, as in the 
hearts of good men, to make daylight and warmth come in. 
He does not wait till they have begun to be good : he works 
in them to will. He does not leave them to do all the 
work by themselves : he works in them to do. 

"What a terrible task, what an impossible duty, we should 
have to perform, if we had to work out our salvation from 
evil, our salvation into good, all by ourselves and from our- 
selves ! What utter discouragement and despair, if we had 
not these promises ! 

But see how everywhere the law of grace pours out its 
unceasing blessings within and around the law of works ! 
God pays us our wages with strict accuracy every evening ; 
but he gives us a thousand times as much as he pays us. 
So I have seen a father agreeing with his little son to pay 
him so many cents a day for doing such and such little 
pieces of work. The child's mind is full of what he is earn- 
ing ; and he is thus encouraged to form habits of diligence, 
punctuality, self-denial, and perseverance : but, while the 
father pays the child his few cents a day, he is giving the 
child home, clothing, food, school, and all sorts of comforts 
and blessings. He is working for his child's present and 
future good all day long. So it is with us : we are such 
little children. God pays us regularly, with reward and 
punishment, our three cents a day'; but he gives us all the 
perfect beauty and blessing, which is new every morning in 
the divine providence of this world. 

Now see how the grace of God, which brings salvation, 
has appeared to us in Nature and Providence, and how it 
has taught us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to 
live soberly, righteously, and godly in this world. 

Part of the goodness there is in this world comes natu- 
rally. It is the organization of soul and body. The sense 
of right and wrong, the delicacy of conscience, the feeling 
of moral obligation, which is in us, we did not make our- 



THE GRACE OF GOD. 



179 



selves. God gives this to us : he gives it new all the time. 
It is a light from him, shining into our hearts. It is his 
Holy Spirit dwelling in us, warning, advising, restraining, 
impelling us. It is in every human soul. His sun shines 
on the evil and on the good. This holy monitor, this care- 
ful inspector, this sacred, solemn voice, is from grace, from 
love. It is the Father's arm, held round every child to keep 
him safe from evil. 

Some have more of this, some less. Some persons seem 
to have a great instinct of conscience, a good genius for vir- 
tue. But they do not deserve the credit of it. They do not 
make themselves so : God makes them so. Others have 
less. That is no fault of theirs. So in an army, on a field- 
day, some stand nearer to the commander, and hear his 
voice more plainly ; and others far off, where they have to 
listen sharply to hear the command. It is not a merit to be 
placed near, nor a fault to be placed far away : but it is a 
fault if we do not try hard to hear the command ; a fault if 
we do not listen. 

So the grace of God puts into our organization sympathy, 
good-nature, kindliness ; giving more to some, and less to 
others, but giving to all their share. Some are, by their 
very nature, sweet and gentle, kind and self-forgetting, and 
ready to sympathize. They cannot help being sweet and 
sunny. It is like a perpetual Sunday when they are near 
us. But that is no merit of theirs : it is the gift of God. 

And so some persons have, by nature, a certain sagacity, 
and a justness of perception, which keep them from going 
wrong. Good sense is an important element in good be- 
havior. And some persons are full of hope, and see the 
great things which may be done ; and so inspire others to 
labor, and labor themselves, in the light of a noble expecta- 
tion. But that is of grace. God made them so : they did 
not make themselves so. 

We have no right to blame people for not being born with 



180 



THE GRACE OF GOD. 



all these delicate and charming qualities. Thank God for 
those who have them, and be willing to rejoice in their light ; 
but do not blame those to whom God has not given the great 
torches and majestic blazing candelabra, but only penny can- 
dles, in this illumination of Xature. 

The religious instinct in man is also, to a great extent, 
organic. What most men call religion, — the tendency to 
adore, the joy of piety, the feeling which carries one to 
worship, the satisfaction in religious ceremonies and forms, 
in liturgies and sacred occasions, — this is a constitutional 
thing. Some races have more, some less. The ancient 
Egyptians had the most of any races ever yet known. 
They lived to worship. Their national life was in wor- 
ship. Their political constitution was a hierarchy. It was 
a government of priests. So some persons now are made 
very prone to worship : others have little of this tendency. 
It is a deep and beautiful element in the soul ; but it is no 
merit to have it, no sin to be without it. 

Part of our human goodness comes from these natural 
sources ; but another part comes from education, from out- 
ward influence. This also is of grace, not of works. 

Look back on your life, and see what blessed influences 
have come to you to form your character, to ennoble your 
aims, to inspire you with a true spirit, — from the home of 
your childhood, from your father and mother, and the dear 
friends of your youth, from the revered and holy men and 
women whose mature virtues rose around you, like solid 
walls of marble, to keep out evil influence. You heard, in 
your childhood, good and just sentiments. It was taken for 
granted, in all the conversation, that men were to be true 
and pure, upright and firm ; that life was a trust, not given 
for selfish ends, but to be used for good. It was not the 
direct moral teaching you heard at home which did you the 
most good, but the indirect, spontaneous, automatic teaching, 
— that which came from the character of others, not from 



THE GRACE OF GOD. 



181 



their thoughts. We, my dear friends, have been born in a 
community saturated by the teachings of the New Testa- 
ment. The conscience of society has been educated by the 
Sermon on the Mount. In every New England village, when 
the Sunday bells send their mellow invitations to praise and 
prayer over the sleeping hills and valleys, on each returning 
day of Jesus Christ, the little children are taken into his 
arms, and pressed to his loving heart. The sun of Chris- 
tianity shines on the evil and the good. Not a reckless boy, 
the torment of his home ; not a hard, grasping, selfish, sharp- 
featured country trader or lawyer, — but has, in the depth 
of his soul, some sweet and holy influence which came to him 
as a divine gift when he was a little child ; and there it is 
down in the depth of his heart to-day. 

Who is there that has not loved, and has not been loved? 
What did we do to merit that tender love of parent and 
child, of grandfather and grandmother, of husband and wife, 
— that generous, self- forgetting devotion of friend, of brother, 
and sister? What did we ever do to be so loved? Who 
ever deserved half the love he has received ? Of the good in 
our hearts, how large a part has flowed from this grace of 
God, which made others come to us with their noble, frank, 
true-hearted affection ! All love is of grace. It is never 
deserved. Nobody ever deserved to be loved ; but being 
loved makes us more deserving than anything else can. 

'' Love is too young to know what conscience is ; 
But "who knows not conscience is born of love? " 

Then more of our goodness than we think comes from the 
divine presence of God in Xature. The calm succession of 
day and night, of spring and summer, teaches us the dignity 
of order and law. The serene beauty of the sky and the 
fields ; the wide-spread joy coming from the clouds, the for- 
est, the grassy meadows, the flowing streams, — take us out 
of our own little projects and plans, and teach us that what 



182 



THE GRACE OF GOD. 



God has made common to all men is the best thing he ha? 
given us. Nature, enlarging our conceptions, unites us with 
our fellow-men, and teaches us humanity. And who ever 
did anything to earn this? God gives all this lavish beauty 
and abundant glory to every creature who has eyes to see it 
and a heart to feel it. 

So, too, the grace of God has given us Jesus Christ. We, 
who have heard, learned, and been taught of him, did noth- 
ing ourselves to obtain that privilege. It is God's free love 
which caused us to be born in this Christendom, not in 
China ; in Protestantism, not in Italy or Spain ; and under 
the most liberal form of Protestantism, where God is seen as 
a Father, loving all his children, and not as a stern judge or 
an awful angry king. 

Thus we see how the grace of God has been the source of 
nearly all the good there is in us. Some of it has come to 
us in our original organization, some has been given us 
through education, some through Christianity. And now 
the gospel says to us, that all this is only the preparation for 
a deeper and fuller life of love which God means to give to 
all of us on the condition of faith. That is, trust him. Do 
not doubt his nearness, his influence, his good-will. Believe 
that, what he has begun, he means to carry on and finish. 
Trust in your Father, and each day accept, as from him, the 
gift of life, the inflowing light of conscience and of reason ; 
the inflowing love which draws out your heart to those 
around you, the inflowing aspiration which longs for some 
better and higher goodness. It is always ready to come 
into your soul. Only open your heart to receive this new 
life, each day, in faith. This faith in God and ourselves 
will make us do more, make us more faithful, conscientious, 
obedient. We shall work more when we do not work to 
gain a reward or to escape a punishment, but because God 
is our Father, and we know it, and so feel perfectly safe. 

This is the true doctrine of salvation by grace. We are 



THE GRACE OF GOD. 



183 



safe because God is our Father. And the true doctrine of 
work is, that we will work, because, since God is on our 
side, it is worth while to work : our work is sure to be 
effectual, and come to something. 

The Christian Church rests entirely on this doctrine. Re- 
ward and punishment separate men : the doctrine of God as 
a judge puts each mau alone with his conscience. When 
men are striving for a prize, each man strives alone for 
himself; but, as soon as God is seen as a Father, the Church 
becomes a family. Then it is not the good alone who belong 
to the family, but all men, because all are God's children. 

The only condition of membership in the true Church is to 
believe that God is your Father ; then you at once see that 
all who believe it with you are your brothers, and know it. 
You look on them as brothers, not because of any goodness 
in them ; they look on you as their brother, not because of 
any goodness in you, but because you are God's child just as 
much as they are. 

The Church is founded on this doctrine. We believe that 
God is our Father, not our Judge or King. We believe that 
we are to be saved by his grace, not by our own peculiar or 
special goodness. Therefore we recognize all as brothers 
who recognize God as their Father. Christ is our Master, 
because he teaches us this. We wish to learn it more fully : 
therefore we come together. We invite all to join us, and 
become members of the Church, if they believe God to be 
their Father ; if they can trust in him as able and willing to 
save their souls. If they feel safe because they see God as 
a Father, they can take each other as brethren and sisters, 
and try to work out this salvation together. 

Therefore, my friends, in conclusion of our meditations, 
let me give you, as the sum and substance of the Christian 
doctrine of grace, these statements : — 

1. God's free, fatherly love has made all men to become 
his spiritual children. His grace has predestined us, before 



184 



THE GRACE OP GOD. 



the foundation of the world, to become wholly his, free from 
sin, and full of truth and holiness. 

2. We become his children as soon as we see that he is 
our Father ; and our salvation is this, — we are safe as long 
as we believe that we are God's children, because then we 
shall always go to him in any temptation and danger. We 
are therefore saved through faith by grace. 

3. We work out this salvation by obedience ; correcting 
all our faults, learning to do all we ought, not in any strength 
of our own, but by means of the inflowing life and love of 
God, which he pours into our hearts so long as they are open 
to him. 

This is the gospel. It is not the law of Moses. It is not 
the law of morality. It is not the law of prudence. But it 
fulfils all these laws by making us do, from gratitude, love, 
hope, and faith, what these laws make us do from fear, from 
conscience, from good sense, and a refined, virtuous pru- 
dence ; and so we may say always as Paul said, " By the 
grace of God, I am what I am." 



xvni 



"NO MAN CARED FOR MY SOUL." 
Ps. cxlii. 4: " No man cared fob 3iy soul." 

WHAT an amount of pathos is contained in this expres- 
sion ! How sad that any human being should ever 
have occasion to utter it ! As long as any Christianity is 
left in the world, as long as common humanity even has not 
wholly deserted it, no one, we should think, would be so 
utterly forlorn, so wholly desolate, as to be obliged to say, 
" No man cared for my soul." 

Several winters since, a fleet of fishing schooners came to 
anchor in one of the harbors of Massachusetts Bay, just at 
evening, in anticipation of a storm which seemed to be com- 
ing on. It came that night, one of the most terrible tempests 
known for many years ; and the wind blew so directly into 
the harbor, that the place where they were riding at anchor, 
usually quite safe, soon became very dangerous. One after 
another of the vessels was blown from its moorings, across 
the harbor, upon the rocks, close to the shore, but where it 
was impossible to render them any assistance. The inhabit- 
ants of the town, crowded together on the bank, saw the 
faces of their neighbors and friends on board, saw the vessels 
go to pieces, and could do nothing to help them. Yet what 
a terrible night it was to those who stood in safety on the 
land, no less than to those whose lives were in peril ! And 
when, on the morrow, they carried to the church the bodies 
of twenty or thirty persons, many of them strangers, the 

(185) 



186 



" NO MAN CARED FOR MY SOUL." 



town was filled with gloom, and sadness rested on all minds 
long after. If it had been otherwise, they would have been 
barbarians. Common humanity dictated this sympathy and 
interest in the distress and peril of their fellow-creatures. 

Why, then, should there not be equal sympathy, equal in- 
terest, manifested when souls are in danger, — when souls 
are shipwrecked on the rocks of sin? The danger is as 
great, the consequence more terrible. Even if we could do 
nothing to help each other's souls, we might show an in- 
terest in their condition, and grief for their destruction. 

When an alarm of fire is given in the night-time, the 
whole city rouses itself from its slumbers, and multitudes 
hasten to preserve the property of a fellow-citizen from 
danger. Why should not church bells be rung when his 
soul is on fire with bad passions and hot desires, and Chris- 
tians run to snatch him like a brand from the burning? 
How often, when a child falls into the water, and is likely to 
be drowned, does the impulse of humanity cause a stranger 
to leap in, and risk his own life to save it ! If the child's 
soul is likely to be drowned beneath the accumulating waves 
of worldliness and worldly prosperity, ought we not to hasten 
as suddenly to rescue it ? I read the other day of a child 
who was lost in the woods, and how the whole population 
turned out, and spent days in looking for him, and was filled 
with joy when he was found. But if he had become lost to 
God and lost to himself, if he had wandered from his 
Father's house, if he had become entangled and bewildered 
in the mazes of sophistry and falsehood, how much greater 
might have been his real peril, and how much more ought a 
Christian community to have exerted themselves to save 
him ! 

If death enters a home, and a fair child, a dear wife, an 
aged and honored parent, is taken, all come to mourn with 
the mourner ; all come with softened and humbled minds 
deeply impressed with the solemnity of the presence of death. 



U NO MAN CARED FOR MY SOUL." 187 



But, if souls die, ought we not to show a deeper sympathy? 
Ought we not to go and mourn over the morally dead? 
Ought we not to attend the funeral of innocence, of purity, 
of peace? Ought we not to console, if we can, those who 
are bereaved of the living, and to sympathize with the ex- 
ceeding grief of the mother in whose child's heart affection 
has died, obedience and gratitude lie in their coffin? Ought 
we not to sympathize with the father whose son has become 
polluted with sin, stained with guilt ? 

" They are the dead, the buried, 
They who do still survive ; 
In sin and sense interred, 
The dead, they are alive." 

That the sensual and the worldly should not care for the 
souls of their brethren, might not indeed surprise us ; but 
that Christians should not, is truly wonderful. If we feel it 
a duty to feed the hunger and clothe the nakedness of the 
body ; to visit the friend who suffers from physical disease, 
and constantly inquire after his bodily health ; to congratu- 
late him on his outward prosperity, and mourn with him 
over his temporal losses, — much more should we endeavor 
to feed moral hunger ; to clothe moral nakedness ; to visit 
those whose souls are diseased ; to congratulate them when 
they have performed an act of integrity, of self-denial ; to 
weep with them when they have gained the whole world by 
means of a baseness. Is it not strange that there should be 
any in Christian lands destitute of this Christian sympathy ? 
any who can truly say, " No man cared for my soul"? 

Yet, if we may anticipate the scenes of the judgment, how 
many there may be from our own community who shall 
stand up there, and say to us Christians, " None of you 
cared for my soul " ! 

One will perhaps speak thus : 44 1 was the child of igno- 
rance and poverty. I grew up in your city in the midst of 
schools ; but there was no one to take me to school. I was 



188 



tc NO MAN CARED FOR MY SOUL." 



in the midst of your churches ; but none of you ever asked 
me to enter their doors. I was in a home of profanity and 
intemperance, and iniquity ran like water into my ears and 
eyes every day ; but no one came to take me by the hand 
and carry me to Sunday school, or to teach me any lessons of 
virtue. I grew up lawless in will, violent in passions, coarse 
in mind ; I fell into petty vice ; I plunged into deeper crime ; 
I was sent from prison to prison ; but no man once asked 
what moral influences I was under while there, or what be- 
came of me when I left it. ' Xo man cared for my soul.' " 

And another may say, " I was the daughter of pious and 
good parents ; but I was obliged to leave my home to earn a 
support. I lived in your homes, and served you ; but you 
never cared for my soul. You never asked what was the 
state of my mind or heart. Seeds of vanity took root in 
them. I became a lover of pleasure. I went down, step by 
step, from follies to faults, from faults to sins ; but no one 
ever cared to ask what I was thinking of, what were my 
aims. And so at last I became profligate and vicious, and 
then you called me an abandoned woman : as though my 
being abandoned by you was my fault more than yours." 

So, too, may the children of the wealthy, the cultivated, 
and the refined, stand up in that day, and say to their 
parents, "Why did you care so little for our souls? You 
cared for our body ; you devoted yourselves with anxious 
thought to our outward health, comfort, ease ; you provided 
us with all luxuries ; you shielded us from all temporal 
dangers ; you labored, day and night, to build up a fortune 
for us ; you sought to establish us in good connections ; you 
spared no expense to provide us with accomplishments : but 
you allowed the canker of vanity, the black spot of selfish- 
ness, to corrode our hearts. You taught us proprieties be- 
fore man, not responsibilities towards God ; you taught us 
not to violate the laws of society, not to disobey the com- 
mands of fashion ; to submit to public opinion : but you 



" NO MAN CARED FOR MY SOUL." 



189 



never taught us to make it our meat and drink to do the will 
of God. You incited us to no heroic devotion, no generous 
emulation ; you awakened within us no spiritual aspirations 
or hopes. Your lives were consumed with anxiety for our 
outward success ; but you never cared for our souls." What 
terrible words will these be for parents to hear from their 
children in the day of account ! 

And how many on that day will complain of the Christian 
Church, whose especial duty it is to care for souls, that it 
neglected that duty ! The slaves will rise up, and say, 
" You sent Bibles to the heathen in foreign lands: but you 
did not teach us, at your own doors, to read the gospel ; you 
did not send missionaries to the heathen in your own land ; 
no man among you told us of the sins which we were com- 
mitting ; no man rebuked our masters for keeping us in a 
condition which made falsehood, cruelty, theft, sensuality, 
almost a matter of necessity Xo ; but you justified the 
system, and defended it out of the word of God." 

And w 7 ill not the slaveholder have cause to say, " You did 
not care for my soul. You did not warn me of the unright- 
eousness of my conduct. You said it was wrong in the 
abstract, but very allowable in the concrete ; wrong as an 
idea, but right enough as a fact. You were watchmen, put 
to blow the trumpet, and to say to the wicked, ' Thou shalt 
surely die ; ' yet you acted, instead, the part of the serpent, 
and said, 4 Ye shall not surely die, but shall be as gods.' 
My blood shall be required at your hands " ? 

Not only the Church generally, but the ministry in par- 
ticular, will have to hear from many in that day the terrible 
words, " You did not care for our souls." How dreadful a 
thing will it be to the unfaithful minister to hear from those 
souls whom it was his especial business to watch for, as one 
who should give account, " You did not care for our spir- 
itual condition. You had no love for our souls. You loved 
to fill your church full of hearers, to make proselytes to your 



190 



"NO man cared for my soul." 



party, to get the reputation of a powerful and eloquent 
preacher, to acquire influence in the church ; but you did 
not love our souls. You preached against scribes and Phari- 
sees among the Jews, not against the heart of Phariseeism 
among ourselves ; you preached against heretics and sinners 
in other places, not those in the pews before you ; you advo- 
cated reforms after they became popular : but you fled, be- 
cause you were a hireling, from 

1 The grim wolf, who, with privy paw, 
Daily devours apace, and nothing said ! ' " 

But there will be other voices heard on that day uttering 
expressions of gratitude to those who have cared for their 
souls ; for the word spoken in season which determined the 
undecided will in favor of right ; for the wise counsel, the 
pure precepts of love, the faithful rebuke, the cordial sym- 
pathy, the kind encouragement, which have turned many to 
righteousness. They will say, " We were without hope, and 
you gave it to us. We were living in godlessness and sin, 
and your affectionate warnings opened our eyes to the perils 
of our condition. You came to us in our doubts with cheer- 
ful encouragement, in our despair to lead us to look to God. 
You have taught us the true value of life ; you have set us 
in the right way. Others have done much for our outward 
prosperity, and we thank them ; but you have made our 
souls alive, and you are the greatest of our benefactors." 

My friends, how easy it is to earn the sweetness which be- 
longs to those who have turned many to righteousness ! It 
is not necessary that one should be a minister, that he should 
be learned in theology or possess worldly treasures, to do 
good in this way. Silver and gold we may not have; but 
such as we have we may give in a spiritual influence which 
will be far better than any earthly treasure. O, that we 
mkrht feel that love of souls which filled the heart of the 
Saviour and of his apostles ; which led Jesus to rejoice in 



" NO MAN CARED FOR MY SOUL." 



191 



the opportunity of teaching the Samaritan woman ; which 
caused Paul to feel that he would gladly spend and be spent 
for the Corinthian converts, for that he sought not theirs, 
but them ; and to say to the Thessalonians, " Ye are my 
glory and my joy, my hope, and crown of rejoicing. Your- 
selves know, brethren, that, being affectionately desirous of 
you, we were willing to have imparted unto you, not the 
gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were 
dear to us ; as ye know how we exhorted and comforted and 
charged every one of you, as a father doth his children, that 
ye should walk worthy of God " ! 

How infinitely greater, deeper, more permanent, is the 
good which we do to others, when we do good to their 
souls, than that which we can do for them in any other 
way ! If we can bring any one to live in reliance on God, 
in submission to his will, in the discharge of duty, in the 
love and service of his neighbor, we may be sure that we 
have done them real good, — good which may outlast the 
Pyramids ; which may fill heaven with joy in the most dis- 
tant ages, and materially advance the cause of Christ in the 
world. I remember a distinguished man in the Church, a 
man whose influence was wide and profound, who said that 
his earliest religious impressions came from a humble and 
ignorant woman, who used to exhort him earnestly when he 
was a child, and whose deep faith he felt and acknowledged. 
Through him and his writings, this poor woman is now 
moving the world. 

Why, then, do we not have more care for souls? It is 
partly because the god of this world has blinded our hearts ; 
because, not being spiritual, we do not feel the reality of 
spiritual things ; because we do not feel the infinite value 
of souls, the terrible evil of sin ; because we have not faith in 
ourselves, in our own power of doing good by anything we 
can say ; because we have not faith that God will help us to 
say what we ought ; and because, moreover, we sometimes 



192 



" NO MAN CARED FOR MY SOUL." 



say as Cain did, "Am I my brother's keeper ?" though in 
a different spirit from that in which he said it. We doubt 
whether we have a right to do anything for the spiritual 
good of our neighbor ; we think that religion is a matter 
between him and God, which we cannot interfere with ; we 
think that he must bear his own burden, and we forget that 
we must help him to bear it. We carry independence in 
religion too far, till it becomes mere individualism ; and we 
neglect the great law of love, which binds soul to soul, and 
ordains that no man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to 
himself. 

There is still another feeling which prevents us from 
direct attempts to help each other's soul, — ■ the feeling that 
more can be done indirectly than directly ; that we can do 
more for others by the influence of a good life and good 
example than by direct exhortation or advice. There is, 
indeed, great weight in this consideration. Certainly, one 
way, and perhaps the most important way, in which we can 
help the souls of others, is by manifesting good principles, 
living convictions, faithfulness to right, a tender and loving 
humanity in our own lives. I have known men, who were 
never in the habit of giving any direct spiritual advice or 
counsel at all, who would never say a word to those about 
them concerning duty, but who exercised the profoundest 
moral influence on all that came near them. They rayed 
moral light on them like the sun, and the warm influence of 
their virtues opened the hearts and elevated the souls of 
all near. One of our poets says well, — 

" Nor knowest thou what argument 
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed hath lent." 

Yet I cannot but think that direct influence might often 
with advantage be added to indirect ; and that, without 
urging upon reluctant minds spiritual considerations, without 
prematurely pulling open the folded bud of the spiritual life, 



" NO MAN CARED FOR MY SOUL." 



193 



without violating the sacred retirement and holy privacy of 
the interior soul, we may yet, if we are watchful, find many 
opportunities of saying words of direct counsel, which shall 
come at the right time, shall fall into the right place, and be 
like seed, to bear thirty, fifty, and a hundred fold. There 
are many, more than I suppose we think of, who are waiting 
and wishing to be spoken to upon such themes as these. 
There are many more, who, though now immersed in world- 
Hness, feel no satisfaction therein, and would gladly be called 
up to a higher mode of life by the tender, friendly, and ele- 
vating voice which should speak to the deepest places of the 
heart and mind. 

There are, then, these ways in which we can manifest our 
care of souls : By shedding a good influence upon them from 
our own life ; by studying their state, and trying to find fit 
opportunities of uttering words of caution or encouragement, 
or of 

" Soft rebuke in blessings ended; " 
and finally by prayer. For we can never approach God 
more acceptably, or with a greater certainty of having our 
prayers answered, than when we are praying for the soul's 
good of our brethren. We must be praying then in the 
spirit of Christ. TTe may then lean on the promise, 44 If ye 
abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what 
ye will, and it shall be done for you." Xo prayer can go 
up more acceptable to God from any human heart than that 
which asks that the loved one may be preserved from some 
insnaring temptation, from the bewildering sophistry of 
worldliness, from the snares of error ; which asks not out- 
ward good, but inward life, for those most dear ; which prays 
that they may hold fast their integrity, and enter into the 
blessed rest of the children of God. When Augustine was 
about to go to Italy, his mother Monica, a pious Christian, 
prayed that he might be prevented, as she feared the tempta- 
tions of Rome. But he went, and was converted to Chris- 
13 



194 



" NO MAN CARED FOR MY SOUL." 



tianity at Milan by Ambrose. "Thou, O my God!" says 
he, u didst give her not what she asked then, but, by refusing 
that, didst give what she was always asking." The prayer 
of the righteous for the souls of others must be at last 
effectual. 

But though Christians are not faithful to this duty, though 
their love grows cold, and though many are obliged to say, 
" No man cares for my soul," yet there is One who always 
cares for the souls of all his children. God cares for souls 
evermore. All souls are his, and he will not let them go 
without many an effort to draw them up to himself. He sends 
many blessed influences, he sends many holy providences, 
ever to those who are neglected and forsaken by man. He 
does not leave himself without a witness in the most aban- 
doned heart. Multitudes are abandoned of man, but none 
abandoned of God. If they do not like to retain him in 
their thoughts, he leaves them to themselves ; but he does 
not forget nor forsake them. His love pursues, surrounds, 
and calls after them. He sees the first dawning light in 
their heart ; he sees them when yet a great way off. If we 
are God's children, if we are Christ's disciples, we also 
should love the souls of all ; for to God and to Christ all 
souls are dear. 



XIX. 



LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION. 
(An Easter Sermon.) 
John xi. 25, 26: "I am the resurrection and the life. He 

THAT BELIE VETH IN ME, THOUGH HE WERE DEAD, YET SHALL HE 
LIVE; AND WHOSOEVER LIVETH AND BELIEVETH IN ME SHALL 
NEVER DIE." 

1 Pet. i. 3 : " Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, which, according to his abundant mercy, 
hath begotten us again unto a living hope by the resur- 
RECTION of Jesus Christ from the dead." 

Phil. iii. 10-12 : " That I may know him, and the power of 

HIS RESURRECTION, AND THE FELLOWSHIP OF HIS SUFFERINGS, 
BEING 3IADE CONFORMABLE UNTO HIS DEATH ; IF BY ANY MEANS 
I MIGHT ATTAIN UNTO THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD; NOT 
AS THOUGH I HAD ALREADY ATTAINED, EITHER WERE ALREADY 
PERFECT." 

Rom. vi. 3-8: "Know ye not that so many of us as were 

BAPTIZED INTO JeSUS CHRIST WERE BAPTIZED INTO HIS DEATH ? 

Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death ; 
that like as christ was raised up from the dead by the 
glory of the father, even so we also should walk in 
newness of life. for, if we have been planted together 
in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the 
likeness of his resurrection. . . . now, if we be dead with 
Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him." 
1 Cor. xv. 49: "As we have borne the image of the earthy, 
we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." 

THAT God has placed in man an instinctive conscious- 
ness of his immortality, is, I think, very evident. We 
call it an instinct, because we can find no better word for it ; 

(195) 



196 



LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION. 



but man's instincts differ from those of the animals in sev- 
eral, ways. The instincts of animals are invariable, univer- 
sal, and unchangeable, or nearly so. Those of men are 
different in degree in different persons ; are modified and 
changed by circumstances in each man ; and are susceptible 
of modification, growth, and improvement. 

The instincts of dogs, foxes, and vipers, were the same in 
the days of iEsop that they are now ; the eagle fed its young 
in the time of Isaiah very much as at the present day ; the 
community of bees, of beavers, and of ants, was governed 
and arranged according to the same constitution and code of 
laws in the nineteenth century before Christ as in the nine- 
teenth century after him. Man, too, has a social instinct, 
which causes him always to organize a society, and to come 
into some kind of community. He does this instinctively 
and necessarily ; but how different are his societies, and 
modes of organizing them ! They were patriarchal among 
the Jews, arranged in families ; hierarchal among the Egyp- 
tians, formed according to priestly arrangements and re- 
ligious laws. Society took the form of clans in Scotland ; 
of tribes among the Indians ; of feudal societies, or a military 
system, in the middle ages ; of castes and fixed occupations 
in India ; and, in modern Europe and America, of perfect 
liberty, or the absence of all organization. Yet through all 
this variety remains the same instinct of society ; the dispo- 
sition to come together and work together in clans, families, 
castes, towns, corporations, armies, or churches. If men 
wish to fight, they unite in an army ; if they wish to make 
cotton, they unite in a corporation ; if they wish to pray, 
they unite in a church ; if they wish to amuse themselves, 
they unite in a club or picnic or ball-room ; if they wish to 
study, they unite in a school or college. Who does not see 
here an irresistible instinct of society existing in man, yet 
modified in a thousand ways by circumstances, by choice, or 
by reason ? 



LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION. 



197 



"We call that tendency, then, an instinct in mankind, 
which causes it continually to think, feel, and act in certain 
ways. These instincts are very numerous. There are re- 
ligious instincts, moral instincts, social instincts, warlike 
instincts ; the instinct of construction, of art, of science, of 
commerce, of accumulation. An instinctive tendency is that 
which is to be found more or less developed in every one, 
and which acts in every one at first independently of reason 
and choice. 

Now, there is in man an instinctive feeling of immortality. 
This shows itself exactly as all the other instincts show 
themselves. Men, in all ages, countries, nations, races, have 
believed in a future life : but they have had very different 
notions about the future life. The Egyptians, long before 
Moses, believed fully in a future life, into which men were 
admitted after a judgment by Osiris. Pythagoras, and 
many ancient religions, taught transmigration ; the Greeks 
held to the Elysian Fields and Tartarus. The Chinese, 
Hindoos, Buddhists, ancient Persians, Scandinavians, North 
American Indians, Mexicans, Peruvians, all had an in- 
stinctive belief in immortality, though they took a hundred 
different views as to its nature. This, I think, proves the 
existence, in man, of an instinct of immortality ; for it 
has all the attributes of an instinct. It is universal, — 
appearing in all races and times. It is involuntary, — 
coming up of itself before any instruction. It is Sonstant, — 
never disappearing from human consciousness, how r ever 
much it may be modified therein. It is active and opera- 
tive, — showing itself as a feeling, a longing after immor- 
tality ; as a belief in some kind of immortality ; and an 
action leading to certain religious practices in relation to 
immortality. 

Moreover, every one is conscious of this instinct in him- 
self. We all, in our desire and thought, reach forward 
beyond death ; we imagine ourselves as present in this world 



198 



LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION. 



after we die, and as always existing somewhere. It is 
almost impossible to realize the end of our own conscious- 
ness. If we try to imagine ourselves as annihilated, we also 
imagine ourselves as looking on, and seeing ourselves anni- 
hilated. 

This instinct of immortality may, indeed, be dormant in 
man. It is so as long as the lower nature is supreme. 
While we live from the body, we die, and have no sense of 
immortal life ; when we live from the spirit, we are full 
of immortality, and death is abolished. Hence Paul says, 
" In Adam we die, in Christ we are made alive ; 99 because 
Christ rouses the immortal part of our nature. The Adam 
within us has no faith in immortality, no sense of a higher 
life. It is not until it is quickened by the spirit, not till the 
spirit is alive, that it believes in life. One part of our 
nature has no instinct of immortality ; and those in whom 
that part is supreme know nothing in their consciousness of 
any permanent and advancing life : their life holds by the 
body, not by the spirit. But those in whom spirit is su- 
preme have an instinctive sense of permanent being : their 
life is the guaranty of its own perpetuity. They need no 
argument to convince them of immortality : the law of life 
within them is its own argument. 

This instinct of immortality in man has been made, by all 
thinkers from the time of Plato, an argument for a belief in 
immortality.* 



* In a recent number, however, of the "Atlantic Magazine," a 
writer has denied the force of this argument, in a somewhat flippant 
way. This is the writer known by the title of the " Country Par- 
son ; " and he understands the argument to be, that man wishes for 
immortality, and consequently is immortal. This argument he easily 
refutes, and calls it rubbish. Now, when all great thinkers, from 
Plato to Addison inclusive, have considered an argument sound 
which this writer calls rubbish, saying that he ;; cannot understand 
how any one ever regarded it as having the smallest force," it is well 



LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION. 



199 



I do not think it does much good to argue with those in 
whom the instinct of immortality has not been awakened. 

to recall the maxim of Coleridge: ''Until I can understand the 
ignorance of Plato, I will conclude myself ignorant of his under- 
standing." This writer does not understand the argument. The 
argument is not, that, because we wish for a thing, we shall certainly 
have it; but it is this: "Whenever God places an instinctive ten- 
dency in his creatures, universal, constant, permanent, he provides 
something which corresponds, in reality and fact, to that tendency." 
For example: He gives to certain birds the instinct of migration. 
Some of the duck and geese family go north as far as the shores of 
Hudson's Bay, and to the fifty-third degree of north latitude, every 
autumn, and return to the Middle and Southern States every spring. 
Accordingly, the particular grasses and berries needed by these birds 
grow in that region. The horse has an instinct for grass, and God 
makes grass for him to eat. Animals, as soon as they are born, be- 
gin to exercise these instincts, and find always provision made for 
them. So man, having a social instinct, finds opportunities for soci- 
ety ; having an instinct for construction, finds himself provided with 
that most wonderful and comprehensive chest of tools, — a hand,; 
having an instinct of observation, has the portable telescope and 
microscope called an eye. The argument, therefore, is, that, an in- 
stinctive longing for immortality having been given, immortality is 
provided. This, it may be observed, is quite a different argument 
from what the modern critic imagines it to be. Suppose, when the 
flock of geese is preparing itself to quit its winter residence in North 
Carolina, and collects in the swamps to make its arrangements for 
moving to its summer villa on Hudson's Bay, a young goose, who 
had never yet made the journey, should fly up on a stump, and make 
a speech to show that they had no reason for believing there was any 
such place as the North, with its grass and berries ; and suppose the 
geese should reply, that, since an instinct to migrate North had been 
given them by God, they might assume that God had provided a North 
for them to go to. That would be Plato's argument, as Plato made 
it. And if the young goose should reply, that, because they wished 
for a thing, it was no reason for believing it, since he had often wished 
for a berry, and had not found it, that would be the argument of the 
t4 Country Parson," — unable to distinguish between a transient wish 
for a particular fact, and a permanent instinct tending towards a dis- 
tant state or condition. 



200 



LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION. 



Two men were once arguing about immortality ; Mr. A try- 
ing to convince Mr. B that there was such a thing, and Mr. 
B not being able to believe it. At last, after a long conver- 
sation, Mr. B took his hat, and departed. Mr. A sat in his 
chair, thinking, and at last fell asleep. He dreamed he was 
walking in the Mammoth Cave, stumbling along through its 
many avenues and intricate recesses, till he came to the river. 
Here two little fishes put up their heads, and said, " Mr. A, 
Mr. A, do you really believe there is such a thing as sun- 
light? We hear those who go through this cave talking 
about sunlight ; but we do not believe in it." So he stopped, 
and argued with them, quoted all authorities on optics, ex- 
pounded to them the doctrines of refraction and reflection, 
referred to Sir Isaac Newton, and even pulled a prism from 
his pocket to explain the prismatic rays. " Why," said he, 
"without light, how could we do anything? how read, how 
work, how play, how distinguish the colors and forms of 
flowers ? and of what use would our eyes be ?" — 64 We have 
not got any eyes," said the two little fishes ; and so, to be 
sure, it was. They had no eyes ! No use arguing with 
them about light, so long as they had no eyes. There are 
many things which we believe, not because of any argument, 
but by the exercise of the faculty appropriate to the thing. 
The affectionate man believes in love, the generous man in 
generosity, the religious man in God, the musician in music. 
The man with a large organ of marvellousness easily believes 
in spirits and in miracles. The man with b large organ of 
hope easily believes in the future life. Cultivate the musical 
organ, and you become convinced of the reality of music. 
Cultivate the organs of faith and hope, and you see the real- 
ity of a future life. It becomes a part of your own exist- 
ence ; something that no sceptical argument can touch. 

So much for immortality ; but what is the resurrection f 
It is the human being rising up, at death, into a higher state. 
The doctrine of the resurrection teaches that the state after 



LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION. 



201 



death is higher than the present state ; that it is a rising-up 
of all souls into a higher life than this. It is the rising of 
all, good and bad, — the good rising into life ; the bad rising 
into judgment, or to the sight of truth. That all rise, appears 
from the passage which makes life in Christ exactly equal in 
extent to death in Adam. " As in Adam all die, even so in 
Christ shall all be made alive." That the resurrection is of 
the wicked as well as of the good, appears from the passage 
which declares that " the hour cometh in which all that are 
in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of man, and 
come forth, — they that have done good, to the resurrection 
of life ; and they that have done evil, to the resurrection of 
damnation." That is, speaking strictly, to the resurrection 
of judgment.* Though this judgment on the soul, which 
shows to it its sin, is a source of suffering, it is nevertheless 
an ascent to a higher state, a rising-up of the soul. This is 
the resurrection. It is not merely rising again, but it is 

* " Resurrection of damnation " (John v. 29), avuoraaiv xoiafwc, — 
the rising-up for judgment. The word tcq'ioiq, translated " damna- 
tion " here in our Bible, occurs forty-eight times in the New Testa- 
ment. 

It is translated by " damnation " three times, by " condemnation " 
twice, by "accusation" twice, by "judgment " forty-one times. 
Wherever the word is translated "damnation," it might be rendered 
"judgment," and the sense would be good ; but where it is translated 
"judgment," if we should change it to "damnation," it would make 
nonsense. 

For example: In the passage, " He hath committed all judgment 
unto the Son," we could hardly say, " He hath committed all damna- 
tion unto the Son." In the passage, — " the weightier matters of the 
law, judgment, mercy, and faith," — it would not do to say, "Ye have 
omitted damnation, mercy, and faith." But where it is declared, 
that he who blasphemes the Holy Ghost "is in danger of eternal 
damnation," it would do perfectly well to say, "Is in danger of 
eternal judgment." 

The radical meaning of the word is unquestionably "judgment;" 
and this meaning we may give wherever it makes good sense. 



202 



LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION. 



rising up. It is not simply a return to life, but it is an 
ascent to a higher life. Christ himself is the resurrection, 
because he is this higher life of the soul. He is the life- 
giving Spirit. It is because all have affinity with him that 
all rise. In every man there is spirit as well as soul ; and 
the spirit is the buoyant principle which carries us up to a 
higher state. 

It will be seen that I by no means accept the common idea 
of the resurrection. I by no means regard it as merely a 
return to life. It is not rising again : it is rising up. The 
doctrine of the resurrection is, that the future life is an 
advance upon the present, — a higher state. 

With this view of the resurrection, and omitting, for the 
present, all reference to the resurrection of the body, let us 
look at one particular passage to see if we can understand its 
statements. This passage is 1 Cor. xv. 12-23, and contains 
the famous discussion of the resurrection. 

Some persons among the Corinthians said that there was 
no resurrection of the dead. Who were they? and what did 
they deny ? Did they deny a future life altogether ? This is 
impossible. It is impossible to suppose that any members 
of the Christian Church in that age could have held such a 
doctrine as this. With what motive could, any have joined 
the Church of Christ, in the face of persecution, if they did 
not believe in a future life ? They were not materialists, but 
idealists. They maintained, probably, like Hymeneus and 
Philetus, that the resurrection is past already. They be- 
lieved in a future life, but in no future universal rising-up 
into a higher state. Perhaps they held that ideal opinion 
common to so many countries, and in so many ages, of the 
absorption of the soul in God. They believed in an immor- 
tality of the soul ; for that was a common belief in Greece : 
but they did not believe in the rising-up of the whole man, 
soul and body, into a higher life. 

Paul maintains, in opposition to this doubt, that there is a 



LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION. 



203 



resurrection of all the dead ; and, first, from the consequences 
of the opposite opinion. 

If there be no resurrection, the first consequence is, that 
Christ has not risen. Christ has not gone up to a higher 
degree of power, into a higher state of life, nearer to God. 
Christ is living somewhere in the realm of departed souls ; 
but we know not where, nor how. He is not near to us ; he 
has no power to help us ; and, if this is so, our faith is vain. 
It is empty of all substance. It is as true as ever ; but it 
has no power, no life, no conquering energy. The gospel 
was as true as ever when Christ hung on the cross ; it was 
as true as ever when he lay in the tomb. If Christ were 
no more, the Sermon on the Mount would still be true. It 
would still be our duty to love our neighbor as ourselves. 
The parable of the Prodigal Son would be forever true ; but 
it would be truth like that of Plato or Seneca, — abstract 
truth. When Christ rose, he added power to truth. It was 
triumphant truth. He had conquered his foes. He was 
still present with his disciples, seen by them in his risen 
state. He was with them, ready to help them from that 
higher state. Now their faith is not empty, but filled with 
living courage and hope. They can do all things now ; for 
Christ strengthens them. If they die, they rise up to be with 
him. But if this is all a mistake, and there be no such law 
of progress at all, then there is no hope for us to conquer our 
sins ; then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have not 
gone up to be with him, living and advancing souls ; but 
have disappeared into the inane realm of Hades. Then our 
great hope for ourselves and for humanity is idle. Our 
preaching of the gospel, and our labors in its behalf, are 
a dream. Our expectations are an illusion ; and, if we 
are thus disappointed, we are, of all men, the most mis- 
erable. 

You may say, " O, no ! Paul was not the most miserable 
of all men ; for he had the satisfaction of doing his duty. 



204 



LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION. 



Virtue is its own reward. He had the peace which passes 
understanding. He was happy in himself. He had received 
a hundred-fold more in the present time. He himself said, 
that ' godliness has the promise of the life which now is, as 
well as that which is to come.' Why then say, fc If in this 
life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most 
miserable 5 ? " 

Well, some men may support themselves in this way, and 
take this comfort ; but Paul could not. His object was not 
self-culture, not to save his own soul, not to be the stoical 
wise man, satisfied in his own virtue. Paul wished to save 
the world ; to do all things through Christ, who strengthened 
him. He was by no means satisfied with anything less than 
helping Christ to redeem the world. He did not wish to be 
happy, or to save his own soul ; but he was willing even to 
be banished from the presence of Christ, if he could thereby 
save the souls of his brethren. Therefore he would be, of 
all men, the most miserable, if that great hope for the world 
was disappointed. 

"But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the 
first-fruits of them that slept." 

The first-fruits, says Robertson, were offered to God, as a 
sisrn that the whole harvest belonged to him. Christ there- 
fore, in rising, shows that all are to rise, that all are to 
ascend into a higher state of being. It will be a state in 
which all move forward. All may not be happier or better, 
but all will be higher. All rise, — some to life, some to 
judgment. Then Paul goes on to say why they rise, by 
what law, and by what power. " As in Adam all die, even 
so in Christ shall all be made alive." In every man, accord- 
ing to Paul's view, is the natural soul, or the Adam, subject 
to death ; and in every man there is also spirit, often dor- 
mant, but capable of being quickened into life by the power 
of divine truth. This living spirit in us is Christ within us. 
When the truth is accepted by the soul, the soul is rescued 



LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION. 



205 



from death, and made alive. All die in Adam. That is, 
the natural man, or the man in whom the finite soul is su- 
preme, does not see spiritual things ; has, therefore, no sense 
of immortality ; sees only this life. This Adam is in all of 
us, this first Adam, which was only made a living soul ; 
made natural, not spiritual ; made for space and time. 
When this part of our nature is supreme, we may believe 
in immortality, but we do not realize it ; we are dead while 
we live. But when the spirit is roused by the divine truth 
which is in Christ, whether we believe in immortality or not, 
we have a foretaste of it. Immortality has begun within us. 
The spirit being alive, the life descends into the soul, and 
that is full of life. We walk in newness of life. We are 
planted together in the likeness of Christ's resurrection. 
We are dead to sin, but alive to God. The law of the 
spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made us free from the 
law of sin and death : for to be spiritually-minded is life ; 
and the spirit is life, because of righteousness. So Christ 
says that he is Resurrection and Life, — not meaning, cer- 
tainly, that he brings dead people to life again, or that he 
makes new bodies for them ; but that he is a life-giving 
spirit to the soul. 

This passage, therefore, declares that in the Adam part of 
our nature we die ; but in the Christ part of our nature we 
have life. Now, this life is not mere existence : it is activity 
and progress. The signs of life are sensibility, activity, 
growth, intelligent consciousness, rational will. A stone 
does not live : but a plant lives ; for the plant acts and 
reacts on Nature, can grow, can bear fruit. The dog has 
more of life : he can feel, think, and will. But the man 
has more : for he can rise out of soul into spirit ; can 
see ideal truth ; can devote himself to a rational purpose ; 
can have, not merely attachment, but affection ; can be tor- 
mented with his sins ; can feel the pardoning love of God ; 
can love abstract truth and infinite beauty ; is capable of 



206 



LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION". 



endless progress ; can worship the invisible. Now this, and 
this only, is real life ; and this life excludes the thought of 
death, and the fear of it. 

TTe see in this passage the truth that there is in the doc- 
trine of universal salvation. 

Universalism is not true if it teaches that there is no dis- 
tinction after death between good men and bad ; if it says 
that all after death go into a state of happiness, or asserts 
that all judgment and retribution take place in the present 
life. For the mere act of dying does not change a bad man 
into a good one ; nor will any one be compelled to be happy 
or to be good hereafter, against his will. A future judgment 
is necessary, because in this life men deceive themselves, 
resist the truth, and refuse to see it ; and, wherever there 
is judgment, there is suffering. In these points, therefore, 
some forms of Universalism are not true. 

But I think that the apostle Paul here plainly asserts that 
the life in Christ is co-extensive with the death in Adam. 
Now, as all men, without exception, die in Adam, so all 
men, without exception, must be made alive in Christ. It 
makes no difference whether death be understood here as 
physical death or as spiritual death. In either case, it in- 
cludes all human beings ; for all human beings are mortal, 
and all human beings commit sin. It therefore follows that 
all human beings shall be made alive ; and not only that, 
but that they shall be alive in Christ. But life in Christ is 
salvation from sin and all evil. When Christ, who is our 
life, shall appear, we shall appear with him in glory. The 
spirit of life in Christ Jesus makes us free from the law of 
sin and death. To live in Christ is necessarily salvation. 
'Therefore the apostle asserts here, that all human beings 
shall ultimately be saved. Ultimately ; for he takes care 
immediately to say, that every man is to be made alive ,; in 
his own order." Christ rises first into a higher state, as the 
first-fruits : then those who belong to him "at his coming 



LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION. 



207 



that is, those who, when he is manifested to them, accept 
him, showing that their hearts are right, and that they can 
receive the immortal Word, which shall fill them with the 
higher life of God. Paul then goes on to speak of the end, 
of the great consummation, the fulfilment of the Messianic 
reign and work, when all souls shall be brought to God ; 
when no more mediation shall be necessary ; when all shall 
believe and accept the truth, and God be all in all. 

The main point in the Christian doctrine of the resurrec- 
tion is, that it is a higher life for all. All ^yho have borne 
the image of the earthy are to bear the image of the heav- 
enly. All who die in Adam are to be made alive in Christ. 
The next life is higher than this in all ways, — physically, 
mentally, morally, spiritually. There will be more of 
thought, love, and action ; more of inward life, more of 
outward activity. It is true that there may be many lower 
down in the scale of being after they get there than some 
are in this world. Some attain to a better resurrection in 
this life than others do in the next. Still, Christianity 
teaches that the human race moves up, after death, to a 
higher level. So, in this world, we are no doubt on a 
higher level than animals ; but I know some horses and 
dogs which are much better behaved, more intelligent, re- 
fined, and moral beings, than some men. Still, the man is 
the higher animal. The apostle Paul, though he did not 
think he had attained to the resurrection of the dead, or was 
perfect, had attained to it far more than most of us will, 
long after we have entered the higher state. 

The doctrine of the resurrection, therefore, is not merely 
that we continue to exist after death : it is that we ascend 
to a higher condition of being. This is the faith of Chris- 
tianity ; this is what Christianity has always taught, and 
induced men to believe. The teaching of the Church has 
been partial, not universal ; dogmatic, not scientific ; and so 



208 



LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION. 



has repelled a great many. To many, the resurrection is as 
repulsive an idea now as it was to the Athenians and Corin- 
thians, because it seems not a grand rational conviction, but 
a narrow theological dogma. It was a stumbling-block to 
the Athenians. 44 When they heard of the resurrection of 
the dead, some mocked." It was a stumbling-block to the 
Corinthians ; for, even in the Christian Church at Corinth, 
there were some who said there was " no resurrection of the 
dead." They did not deny immortality ; they were not ma- 
terialists, — they were idealists : but they denied the resur- 
rection. 

But the highest power of the resurrection of Jesus is, that 
it destroys the sense of weakness, doubt, unworthiness, sin- 
fulness, which belongs to us all, and gives us instead courage 
and hope. It does for us what it did for the apostles : it 
brings us near to God, and so gives us power in our own 
souls. Therefore it is said that Christ was " raised for our 
justification." The theologian is astonished at this saying. 
He thinks that we are justified by Christ's death. So we are, 
but by his resurrection too. Scripture is more liberal in its 
theology than we are. It is like Xature : it can reach the 
same end by different methods. If Xature sees the air full 
of miasma, it can purify it by electricity, — sending lightning 
and thunder to shake it through and through, and rain to 
wash it clean : or it can do the same thing by freezing cold ; 
one sharp frost will drive away all seeds of disease and 
death. 

So we are justified by Christ's death. For in that holy 
hour of ineffable, unspeakable sorrow, in that shame to 
which he came down for us, he touches all hearts. We 
are drawn to him by his patient love, and our sins pass 
away. The ice which covered our hearts like a thick breast- 
plate melts under these continuous showers of sorrow, and 
we feel ourselves drawn to God by the death of his Son. 
But also we are drawn to God by the ascended Christ ; 



LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION. 



209 



•Christ living now above ; Christ working now for the world ; 
Christ glorified, and surrounded by a great company of lov- 
ing, laboring men and angels. This also fills us with a 
desire to leave our sins, and join the great and holy com- 
pany whose names are written in his book. Dark, driving- 
rains melt the ice ; warm, glorious, sunny days melt it 
also. 

Persons sometimes have a fear lest the friends who have 
gone before them may have gone on away from them ; that 
progress may have removed them too far ; that they will 
never be able to rise to their communion. But this is to for- 
get, that, while progress tends to separate, love tends to unite 
again. The balance of the spiritual universe is maintained 
by these two antagonistic forces, just as the balance of the 
material universe is preserved by attraction on the one sidu, 
and the centrifugal force on the other. Does not a parent 
love a child, though the parent knows more, and is higher? 
Did not Christ love his disciples ? When he went away, did 
not he say that he went to return again ? It is the work of 
the highest angels to help the lowliest sinners ; and love 
always tends to bring together extremes and opposites, in 
order that progress may not pull the universe of souls apart. 
Our angels do not love us less because they have gone into 
heaven : they love us more. They do not forget us because 
they have ascended to God : they remember us more. The 
higher they go up, the lowlier they lean down ; for every 
acquisition, attainment, and elevation in God's heaven is 
used for the good of those who most need help, light, and 
deliverance. 

In thinking of the other world, we sometimes seem to 
consider it impossible that the myriads of human beings 
who pass into it from all lands, races, nations ; of all habits, 
tastes, characters, opinions, ages ; infants and old men, saints 
and pirates ; thousands going at once from a field of battle, 
— should be provided, each with his own home, sphere, sur- 
14 



210 



LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION. 



roundings ; that a suitable place should be got ready before- 
hand to receive every one of them. But why should that 
be more strange than that the same provision has been made 
in this world ; that the tens of thousands who are born daily 
are born each into a home, on the bosom of a mother, with 
fostering care and patient love around him? Each comes 
wholly helpless ; each is helped, fed, clothed, taught, by pro- 
vided love. Not only so, but of the millions of insects, 
reptiles, animals, fishes, daily arriving, each one comes to 
find its blade of grass, its leaf, made ready for it ; each with 
the climate, the home, the food it needs. " In my Father's 
house are many mansions : if it were not so, I would have 
told you. I go to prepare a place for you." It may be part 
of the occupation of angels and higher spirits to prepare 
suitable circumstances for those who are to come after. 

We must not think of the other world as lonely, empty, 
or monotonous. It is more full, rich, varied, than this ; it 
has a richer nature, more divine scenery, more precious 
society, more life, growth, thought, action, love, than this 
w T orld. If it is a higher world, it must be more full, rich, 
and beautiful. 

The resurrection of Christ also teaches us that those wdio 
ascend to God continue the same persons they were before, 
— that they have the same character, only elevated ; the 
same individual essence, only purified ; the same sweetness 
which we loved, only sweeter ; the same beauty which seemed 
to us so enchanting, only more beautiful still. They are, as 
Bryant says, 

"Lovelier in heaven's street climate, yet the same." 

For the poets are the prophets still, and often tell us the truth 
by an inspiration more orthodox than that of the theologians. 
No true poet ever for a moment doubted that he should know 
his friend hereafter, though theologians may sometimes doubt 
it ; for the heart which is illuminated by inspired thought can 



LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION. 



211 



read beforehand the immortal and infinite quality in the soul, 

— that which is to make the future angel. When poets de- 
scribe their friend, it seems extravagance to a prosaic nature ; 
but it is the ideal nature of their friend they see and know, 

— the future augel in the present mortal. 

When Whittier describes the young girl who is gone, he 
describes her as she inw r ardly was before she went, as she 
radiantly is now : — 

" As pure and sweet her fair brow seemed, 
Eternal as the sky : 
And like the brook's low song her voice, — 
A sound which could not die. 

" And half we deemed she needed not 
The changing of her sphere, 
To give to heaven a shining one 
Who walked an angel here. 

" The blessing of her quiet life 
Fell on us like the dew ; 
And good thoughts, where her footsteps pressed, 
Like fairy blossoms grew. 

" The measure of a blessed hymn, 
To which our hearts could move ; 
The breathing of an inward psalm, 
A canticle of loye." 

Jesus rose, and continued the same Jesus as before. He 
continues the same Jesus still. Our hearts burn within us 
as he talks to us on this Easter morning, as on that first 
Easter when the two disciples walked over the bare hills of 
Judaea on their way to Emmaus. Jesus has ascended up 
higher and higher ; but he is the same tender friend, the 
same forgiving and merciful master, the same perfect har- 
mony of awful truth and sweetest affection, before whom the 
Pharisee trembled, and to whom the little children crept. 
He is still the same who said to the hard bigots, " Ye 



212 



LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION. 



serpents, ye generations of vipers ! " and to the poor, trem- 
bling, sinful woman, " Neither do I condemn thee : go, and 
sin no more." 

And because Jesus in the resurrection is the same, there- 
fore all those who surround him are the same as they were 
before. u We shall be like him ; for we shall see him as 
he is." He was not unclothed, but clothed upon, — his 
mortality swallowed up of life. So shall it be with our 
friends ; so, too, with ourselves. 

Christ makes the soul alive ; but it is not a belief in the 
historical Christ which makes the soul alive, but in the 
Christ formed within us. I can conceive of one full of 
doubts, scepticism, and unbelief in regard to the historic 
Christ, but with a soul full of spiritual life. If a man loves 
God, and trusts in him ; if he believes in spirit more than in 
matter ; if he believes in justice, truth, and right ; if he 
loves his brother, and helps his brother in this world, — 
then, whether he knows it or not, he belongs to Jesus, and 
he really believes in him. I do not mean to say that the 
historic faith is unimportant ; quite the contrary : but, though 
important, it is not essential. It belongs to theology : it 
does not belong to religion. It belongs to the intellect, not 
to the heart. It is a matter of correct thinking, not neces- 
sarily a matter of correct living. 

Of the tens of thousands of sweet and holy souls which 
pass every year into the other world, how many have any 
clear or exact belief concerning the historic Christ? Of the 
thousands of Christians who pass away out of every church, 
how many know much, even about their own creed? But 
they believe that God, the infinite, and unseen, is good ; and 
they reverence him. They know that Christ is to them, 
somehow, a revelation of God as Father and Friend ; and 
they believe that. They know that this life is sweeter and 
more heavenly in proportion as we put into it more of gen- 
erosity, self-forgetfulness, and love. They feel very humbly 



LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION. 



213 



that they do not do what they ought ; but they try to do 
something for others. And so, not knowing it, they are 
already risen with Christ (as Paul says), and are seeking 
the things above. Christ is already their resurrection and 
life : and we feel concerning them that they cannot die ; 
that outward death is a mere transition for them to higher 
worlds. 

No man fears death, or believes in death, when his soul is 
alive. When we are full of any lofty conviction, any great 
purpose, any self-forgetting love, death disappears : it ceases 
to be anything. It is no king of terrors to us, except when 
we are in a low and selfish state. When we rise out of that 
with Christ, he is our resurrection, and we feel that we can- 
not die. 

See that old man, whose life has been an earnest seeking 
after truth, an earnest striving to do good. He has, from 
time to time, caught a glimpse of great realities. Too 
honest to profess more than he is certain of, he has never 
had a very long creed : but he has always believed in good- 
ness ; he has always believed in honesty and truth ; he has 
always been ready to help the helpless, and comfort the 
forlorn. He did not consider whether the poor man, who 
needed his help, was very good or not : he needed his help ; so 
he tried to help him. He did not ask whether he was white or 
black, or yellow or red ; a foreigner or an American : he tried 
to help him. He did not exclude him from his sympathy be- 
cause he was a negro, because he was an Irishman, because 
he was a Roman Catholic, or because he was an Atheist. 
If God could bear with him, he could. So, now, in the 
calm evening of life, he looks out on the sweet, sunny land- 
scape before his door, and his heart brims over with God's 
love. He says to himself, " How good God has been to 
me ! " He thinks of his boyhood, its hopes and hilarity. 
He sees the field where he played ; where he rode the horse 
with a halter, without saddle ; the wood where he went to 



214 



LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION". 



get nuts ; the pond where he fished and paddled in the 
water. All the kindly influences of Nature, he perceives, 
taught him ; and all were God's messengers to his intellect 
and heart. He remembers the dawning affections of his 
soul, the sweet love-story of his youth, the struggles and 
sorrows of his manhood. He thinks of the hour when God 
gave him a kindred heart to be his companion and friend in 
life, and how his heart was opened and purified by that affec- 
tion ; and he thinks of the hour when he stood by the open 
grave, looked his last look at that calm, serene face, and saw 
all heaven opened, and immortality born out of death. So 
he sees God in everything, and so he tranquilly awaits his 
own coming change. Christ is to him life and resurrection, 
and he does not fear death : he knows that what is good in 
him is real, and what is real cannot die. 

See that youth, fall of all good culture carefully acquired, 
full of all choice and rare ability carefully trained. He has 
studied ; he has travelled ; lie has written books, not yet 
published, but such as will give him a reputation among the 
first writers of his land. He has studied man and nature, 
and his words flow rich in all happy expression to convince 
and charm. All life is before him. full of promise. But. at 
the first call of his country's need, he goes to war ; in one 
of the first battles, he flings himself on the enemy's bat- 
teries, and dies, shot by a ruthless bullet in the front field. 
Did he not love life? Did he not fear death? He loved 
life, but did not fear death ; because his soul was full of 
realities ; because he was not living for a name or an 
appearance, but for duty and manly accomplishment. He 
has passed away from earth, apparently leaving his work un- 
fulfilled. But God has many mansions in his house ; and 
every soul will find enough to do, and enough to be, some- 
where in God's great heaven. 

See. too. that woman who has been for long years a help- 
less invalid, with no ability (one would say) to learn or do 



LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION. 



215 



anything ; useless (one would think) to herself and to others. 
Ah, no ! She is learning in that helpless state new lessons 
every day of God's tender love ; she is teaching every day, 
by her patience and goodness, new lessons to others ; and 
when her time is fulfilled, and she is gently called away, no 
one thinks, that, because her body is feeble and her sensa- 
tions imperfect, she is not ready to live on and to go on. 
The soul within is full of healthy life, and she cannot 
die. 

These all die in faith, not having received the promises. 

Even when a little infant goes, which has never done 
either good or evil in this world, its life's task all unlearned, its 
earthly work all undone : does any one doubt that it goes where 
better lessons will be provided, and a more suitable duty 
given ? TTe say in our souls, while tears dim our eyes, 
" Let the little one go to Jesus, and forbid him not ; for of 
such is the kingdom of heaven." 

It is not accomplishment, it is not attainment, that fits us 
for a higher life : it is faith. That is, it is that spirit which 
trusts and hopes, and looks forward, and does not despair. 
It hopes for others as for itself. It is patient, and therefore 
strong. 

Immortality and resurrection, therefore, begin here. We 
rise with Christ into a higher life with every right word, act, 
purpose, and affection. We sit with Christ Jesus now in 
heavenly places. We are in heaven already when we are 
full of love to God and man ; in hell already when we lose 
that love. Heaven and hell are both in us, and all outward 
heavens and hells through which we may pass are only the 
reflections and supplements to our inward state. There is 
every variety, no doubt, of heaven and of hell in the other 
world ; but they are all of them for our good. If we need 
hell, we shall go there ; if we are fit for heaven, we shall go 
there. But God is in both, and both are his servants. He 
does not take away those whom he loves to be with himself 



216 



LIFE AND THE EESURRECTION. 



in some separate heaven. He does not leave the bad, aban- 
doned of all hope, to the Devil ; but he himself cares for 
all, and loves all. Those who do not love him, he loves ; 
those who do not know him, he knows ; those who are as 
yet wilful, selfish, unreconciled, he remembers. No doubt 
there are lost souls in the other world, as there dre lost 
souls in this world ; but Christ, who came to seek and save 
the lost here, will seek and save the lost hereafter. Never 
was there a dogma more utterly baseless than that which 
teaches that this short life is all of trial allowed to us ; that 
all the discipline, probation, and opportunity of the soul, is 
shut up in these few earthly years. Probably we shall need 
trial and probation for myriads of years ; probably heaven 
itself shall not be free from trial and discipline. Even the 
angels and archangels may have their temptations, their diffi- 
culties, their great opportunities, their perpetual choice of 
freedom. 

After all, nothing helps us so to believe in immortality and 
heaven as death. The man who is a sceptic and doubter in 
his study becomes a believer by the pale face of his darling 
child or the beloved bride of his heart. All which we see 
through a glass darkly, when we look at it merely with the 
intellect, we behold face to face when the heart is melted. 
As Stephen, stoned to death, saw heaven opened, so we, too, 
when we are beaten down by disappointment and disaster, 
often see heaven opened. 

" Upon the frontier of this shadowy land, 
We, pilgrims of eternal sorrow, stand : 
What realm lies forward, with its happier store 

Of forests green and deep, 

Of valleys hushed in sleep, 
And lakes most peaceful ? Tis the land of Evermore, 

44 Very far off its marble cities seem, — ■ 

Very far off, — beyond our sensual dream, — 



LIFE AND THE RESURRECTION. 



217 



Its woods unruffled by the wild winds' roar; 

Yet does the turbulent surge 

Howl on its very verge. 
One moment, and we breathe within the Evermore. 

" And those we loved and lost so long ago 
Dwell in those cities, far from mortal woe ; 
Haunt those fresh woodlands, whence sweet carollings soar. 

Eternal peace have they ; 

God wipes their tears away ; 
They drink that river of life which flows forevermore." 



XX. 



POWER OF THE KEYS. 



Rev. iii. 7 : 1 ' These things saith he that is holt, he that is 

TRUE ; HE THAT HATH THE KEY OF DAVID ; HE THAT OPENETH, 
AND NO MAN SHUTTETH; AND SHUTTETH, AND NO MAN OPENETH." 

Luke xi. 52: " Woe unto you, lawyers! tor ye have taken 

AWAY THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE *. YE ENTERED NOT IN YOUR- 
SELVES, AND THOSE THAT WERE ENTERING IN YE HINDERED." 

Matt. xvi. 19 : "I will give unto thee the keys of the king- 
dom OF HEAVEN ; AND WHATSOEVER THOU SHALT BIND ON EARTH 
SHALL BE BOUND IN HEAVEN, AND WHATSOEVER THOU SHALT 
LOOSE ON EARTH SHALL BE LOOSED IN HEAVEN." 



KEY is a very ancient invention. You find keys, in 



JOL- Egyptian museums, made three thousand years before 
Christ : so that locks and keys were common enough among 
the Jews to be made use of as an illustration and metaphor 
by Jesus. In fact, locks and keys mark an epoch in civili- 
zation. The savage has nothing to lock up. If he has any- 
thing he wishes to keep to himself, he hides it, as a 
dog hides his bone. When he can lock it up, and trust 
to the sacredness of a lock, he has already ceased to be 
a savage. In a yet higher civilization, I presume we shall 
once again dispense with locks and keys, because we shall 
have respect enough for each other to consider that all which 
any one wishes to keep to himself is sacred, even without a 
lock. In fact, locks are not now as common as they were 
once, nor as elaborate. In our homes we do not need them. 

(218) 




POWER OF THE KEYS. 



219 



Only on front-doors and bank-safes, and trunks when we 
travel, and the like, we use them. 

Now, there is a place which God has locked, and for 
which he has provided the keys : it is a place where he 
keeps his best treasures. But there is this peculiarity about 
it, that, whereas to each of our locks there is only a single 
kind of key, God's lock is so made, that a variety of keys 
will open it. 

This secret place of the Almighty is in the depths of 
the human soul, — the depths out of which we cry to him. 
It is a place of profound peace when storms rage above and 
without. It is a place of perfect love when passions chase 
each other, dark and violent, over the surface of our troubled 
life. It is the " kingdom of heaven," which Christ says is 
within us ; the u kingdom of God," which Paul says is 
" righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." 

Christ gave to Peter and to the apostles the keys to this 
kingdom of heaven. It is usually supposed that this refers 
to an outward heaven, to a heaven hereafter in the other 
world. The common Roman Catholic idea is, that St. Peter 
sits at an outward gate, with the keys in his hand, and un- 
locks it to the good, but keeps it locked against the wicked ; 
unlocks it to the Orthodox, but Iceeps it locked against the 
heterodox ; unlocks it to the members of the true Church, 
but keeps it locked against the heretics ; unlocks it to the 
converted, but keeps it locked against the unconverted. But 
it is certain that the door to any outward heaven lies through 
an inward heaven. If we do not first enter " the kingdom 
of heaven which is within us," we shall not enter any heaven 
above us or outside of us. It is always so. We find out- 
side of us only that which corresponds to w r hat is within. 
We feel outside that w 7 hich we have felt w T ithin. Outward 
knowledge attaches itself to inward. An outward heaven is 
for those who have already gone into an inward heaven. 

Three men were riding on horseback through a romantic 



220 



POWER OF THE KEY?. 



country on a summer's day. Their road wound up to the 
top of a hill ; and, when they reached the summit, a great 
range of country lay before them. They stopped to look at 
it. 44 How very interesting and extraordinary ! 99 said one. 
6 4 So it is/' said the others ; 44 more so than any place we 
ever saw." 44 "What a splendid subject for a painting ! 99 said 
the first. 44 Do you see this little hill, with its dark clump 
of trees in shadow for the foreground ; and that beautiful 
middle distance, with the winding and reaches of the stream, 
and the village roofs all glittering in sunlight ; and then that 
exquisite soft blue distance, and the pale mountains beyond?" 
4> I confess," said the second, 44 I did not see your picture ; 
but I was struck with the extraordinary geological character 
of this interval, especially those terraces, one above the other, 
marking the heights at which the river used to stand." 
44 And I," said the third, 44 noticed neither; but I thought I 
had never seen a place better adapted for a military position. 
That opening in the hills is so defensible ! those terraces are 
so adapted for batteries ! Nature has already made the 
works which would require an army working for months to 
erect." Thus these three gentlemen — one an artist, one a 
geologist, and the third a general — saw in the landscape 
what they had in their own minds ; and meantime their 
horses, I suppose, saw nothing in the valley but the proba- 
bility of good pasture, with plenty of soft grass. 

Thus the outward heaven opens directly for every man 
out of his inward heaven. There is no locked door between. 
It is an open way, directly in and up. The moment we 
enter the inward heaven in our own soul, we are on the way 
to the heaven beyond. If the inward heaven is locked, then 
the outward one is locked too. If the heaven in the soul is 
not open, the heaven beyond is closed. If the heaven here 
on earth is bound, then that is also bound. If this- is loosed, 
then that. Peter, therefore, and the apostles, do not sit by 
the gate of any outward heaven, but by the gate of the 



POWER OF THE KEYS. 



221 



heaven in the soul ; and they hold the keys, and offer them 
to us. What are they? How did Christ give them to 
Peter and to the other apostles? 

Let us consider these questions a little more carefully than 
usual. 

The Roman Catholic Church says that Christ gave to the 
apostle Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven. I agree 
that he did. The Protestant Church says that he also gave 
this same power to all the disciples, in that subsequent pas- 
sage of Matthew, in which he says to all of them collectively 
what he before said to Peter individually. Roman Catho- 
lics argue that the popes, being the successors of Peter, 
inherit his power of binding and loosing. Protestants argue 
that all Christian ministers inherit the same power from ail 
the apostles. I agree to all this ; but I believe still more 
than this. These theories do not go far enough. Christ 
gave the keys to Peter ; he gave the keys to all the apostles ; 
he gave the keys to all the successors of Peter, and to all 
the successors of the apostles : but he gave the keys also 
to all Christians, in all places, and in all times ; to all who 
have Peter's faith. Every Christian, in my judgment, has 
the key to the kingdom of heaven ; and what he binds on 
earth is bound in heaven ; what he looses on earth is loosed 
in heaven. 

For what is meant by 44 the keys of the kingdom of 
heaven," and by 44 binding and loosing"? We have here 
three questions, concerning 44 the kingdom of heaven," con- 
cerning 44 the keys," concerning 44 binding and loosing." 
Let us look at each of these questions. 

What is meant by the kingdom of heaven ? We have 
already given our answer. It is the reign of God, first in 
the human heart, and then in the human life ; the reign 
of truth and love ; the reign of the Messiah foretold by 
the prophets, when men should beat their swords into 
ploughshares, and when the desert should rejoice, and 



222 



POWER OF THE KEYS, 



blossom as the rose ; it is the reign of Christ here and 
now ; it is Christianity in this world, beginning here, 
continued hereafter. The kingdom of heaven, then, is 
not heaven in the other world, but heaven in this world ; 
not heaven hereafter, but heaven here. It is true that it is 
continued into the other world ; but it begins in this world. 
When John the Baptist, when Christ, and when his apostles, 
preached, saying, " The kingdom of heaven is at hand," 
they meant a kingdom in this world. TThen we pray, in 
our daily prayer, " Thy kingdom come," we are praying for 
it to come here. In the parables which compare the king- 
dom of heaven to " leaven," to " mustard-seed," to " a net." 
&c, Christianity in this world is spoken of; and so, when 
Christ speaks of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, it is the 
key to the kingdom of heaven in this world which is referred 
to. Heaven itself is the invisible, spiritual world of God ; 
but the kingdom of heaven is that world descending into 
this, God with us, the tabernacle of God with men. The 
kingdom of heaven, therefore, means Christianity here, or 
Christ reigning, first in the heart, then in the Church, next 
in Society, and lastly in the State. 

What are the keys of the kingdom of heaven? The keys 
are the power by which the door into this kingdom shall be 
opened. The kingdom is Christianity ; the door is Christ 
himself : and the key is whatever reveals Christ or opens 
him, so that men may pass through him into Christianity. 
Jesus says, " I am the door. Through me, if any man enter 
in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture." 

To " bind and to loose" means simply to open and shut 
the door. Doors were fastened anciently by ropes, and the 
key was used to fasten and to unfasten them. 

This, then, is the answer to our three questions. The 
kingdom of heaven is Christianity ; the key is that which 
opens the door of Christianity ; binding and loosing is open- 
ing or shutting the door. 



POWER OF THE KEYS. 



223 



The mistake which the Church has made concerning this 
doctrine of the keys has been to make the power of the keys 
something arbitrary. It has been supposed that Christ gave 
to Peter the power of deciding, in an arbitrary way, as to 
who should be admitted into heaven, or excluded from it ; or 
that he has given to the Church an arbitrary power of receiv- 
ing members into it, or excommunicating them from it. But 
the power here given is not formal, but real ; not depending 
on any man's will or pleasure, but fixed in the nature of 
things. It is a power universally given to knowledge and 
insight. It is " the key of knowledge/' All true insight is a 
key, w T ith which to bind or loose, with which to open and shut. 

Two or three thousand years before the birth of Christ, 
the Valley of the Nile was inhabited by a nation which had 
carried all the arts of life to a high state of perfection. One 
of their habits was that of writing. They kept a record of 
everything. They had a rage for history. For thousands 
of years, the whole nation kept a diary of all events, great 
and small. They engraved, and painted over, the stone 
walls of their pyramids, temples, and tombs, with the most 
multitudinous details of public and private life. But what it 
all was, no one could tell. The key had been lost. But at 
last Champollion found the key, and Gpened the door ; and 
now all men can go in and out amid that mysterious Egyp- 
tian knowledge, and understand it. 

Knowledge in the mind of any one is a key by which he 
can open the door of science or of art to others. When the 
knowledge is only of facts or of laws, it can be communi- 
cated without enthusiasm or inspiration. But the higher 
kinds of knowledge require thes'e. Spiritual and moral 
truth must be taught in a living way, not in the letter, but 
in the spirit. To bear witness to such truths no hearsay 
information will suffice, but only personal conviction. Flesh 
and blood cannot reveal it, but only " my Father which is in 
heaven." 



224 



POWER OF THE KEYS. 



It was this sort of knowledge concerning Christ which 
Peter at that moment possessed. He, like other Jews, was 
expecting the Christ to come in a grand outward way, with 
pomp and power, with signs from heaven ; living in Jerusa- 
lem like a king ; leading great armies against the Romans, 
and driving them out, and placing the Jewish nation at the 
head of mankind. All at once, it flashed into the soul of 
Peter that this Jesus of Xazareth, the carpenter's son, the 
poor peasant of Galilee, was the great Messiah who was to 
come. This holy love and truth in him, this heavenly good- 
ness, this strange wisdom, which moulded all minds, was the 
true sign of his divinity. It was but a momentary glimpse 
of the truth, but a glorious one. It was swept away the 
very next moment by the returning wave of prejudice and 
old opinion ; so that Jesus was obliged, directly after, to call 
Peter, Satan. But Jesus beheld in this momentary insight 
the germ of a living faith, and said, " On this rock will I 
build my Church." 

Personal, living faith in Christ is the key to Christianity. 
All who have this faith, from the pope in the Vatican to the 
poorest slave on a Southern plantation, have the key to the 
kingdom of heaven ; and what they bind on earth is bound 
in heaven, what they loose on earth is loosed in heaven : 
that is, when they open the door, it is opened ; and when 
they shut the door, it is shut. 

Any such authority as this, if it were arbitrary, would be 
dangerous. We could not trust any human being with such 
power, and God would not trust him. But the power to 
bind and loose is not arbitrary. It depends on no man's 
will. It is a power which God gives of seeing and uttering 
the truth. ZS"or is it confided to one man, or to one class of 
men ; not to bishops, not to priests, nor to ministers. It is 
given to the pure in heart, who see God : the keys are taken 
from the hands of the wise and the prudent, and given to the 
babes. God enriches whom he will with utterance and 



POWER OF THE KEYS 



225 



knowledge. He reveals deep things by his spirit. He shows 
his truth to the humble and the sincere, and makes them able 
ministers of the new covenant. They are able, by manifes- 
tation of the truth, to commend themselves to every man's 
conscience. God shines in their hearts, to give the light of 
the knowledge of his glory, giving them the spirit of wisdom 
and revelation. Thus the power of the keys is the power 
given to all sincere hearts to see the truth and to utter it. 

Thus we understand what is meant by the keys in regard 
to opening the kingdom of heaven. All Christian?, when 
they speak out of their own Christian experience, open the 
kingdom of heaven. But how do they shut it? 

All truth has two sides, positive and negative. It attracts 
and repels. It draws men towards itself, or sends them from 
itself. It is a savor of life or of death. It distinguishes 
good from evil, truth from error, right from wrong. When 
die sun rises, it not only makes lights, but also shadows. 
The side towards it is in light : the side turned away is in 
shadow. 

All divine offers are with conditions. Everything has its 
price. The conditions are simple but absolute. An invita- 
tion may be free, and yet conditional. You are freely invited 
to a great feast ; but there are conditions attached to the 
invitation. The first is, that you shall be willing to go, that 
you shall accept the invitation ; the second is. that you shall 
go at the right time and to the right place ; and the third 
condition is. that, when there, you shall be dressed suitably, 
and behave properly. 

Christianity, like everything else, has its limitations and 
its laws. " Except ye be converted, and become as little 
children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven/* 
u Repent, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted 
out.'* " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be 
saved.'* " If we confess with our mouth the Lord Jesus, 
and believe in our heart that God has raised him from the 
15 



226 



POWER OF THE KEYS. 



dead, we shall be saved." " Every one that loveth is born 
of God, and knoweth God." " He that loveth not, knoweth 
not God ; for God is love." " If we confess our sins, he is 
faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us 
from all unrighteousness." Every one of these conditions is 
a key which turns two ways. Turn it one way, it locks the 
door ; turn it the other, and it unlocks it. 

It is, therefore, easy to see how every Christian has given 
to him, in his sight of divine truth, the keys of the kingdom 
of heaven ; the power to bind and to loose, to open and shut ; 
to judge the world, men and angels ; to part the sheep from 
the goats. Whosesoever sins he remits, they are remitted ; 
and whosesoever sins he retains, they are retained. When 
he utters the truth, if men are willing to accept it, they enter 
the kingdom ; if unwilling, they turn away. Every true 
word makes a parting of the ways ; compels us to decide 
which way we will go, — whether to the right, into spiritual 
life ; or to the left, into spiritual death ; and is, therefore, a 
savor of life or of death. 

But human words have this great power only when they 
are the words of God, and not ours ; only when. God speaks 
through us. When they proceed from our own will, they 
are empty and insignificant. 

But I have emphasized keys, in the plural. The text says 
keys, in the plural ; and that plural is significant. We are 
apt to suppose that there is only one. It is very natural. 
It is our church ; it is our creed ; it is our experience : that 
is the only one. I recollect a young lady, who, having just 
been proselyted to the Roman Catholic Church, wrote a let- 
ter to a friend, describing her satisfaction therein, and said, 
" Believe me, true happiness and real peace cannot be found 
anywhere else than in our Church." In like manner, you 
will hear those just converted to some other faith say the 
same ; or rather, let me say, converted to God by means of 
some other faith. I have heard the same sort of claim 



POWER OF THE KEYS. 



227 



made, with perfect sincerity, for every church and for every 
creed. Each thinks the creed and church by which he has 
found heaven to be the only way to heaven. He does not 
know of any other. I have often thought that I should like 
to see a book written, to be called " The Book of Converts," 
containing the experiences, given by themselves, of those 
who have been converted from the Roman Catholic Church 
to the Protestant, and vice versa ; from Orthodoxy to Unita- 
rianism and to Universalism, and the contrary ; from Epis- 
copacy to Quakerism ; to Swedenborgianism ; yes, even from 
Christianity to Infidelity, as well as from Infidelity to Chris- 
tianity. For, from all these, you can find perfectly sincere 
and honest statements of the joy and peace they have found 
in their new belief or unbelief. And such a book would tend 
to liberalize the Church ; showing, first, that no such con- 
version proved anything in regard to the abstract truth of 
the system renounced or accepted, because the same comfort 
and peace, is found by those going in and those going out ; 
and secondly, that, by all these various creeds and churches, 
God does teach something to the soul, and that all these ex- 
periences are keys to some one of the many mansions in 
God's heaven. God teaches us sometimes even by unbelief ; 
and the way to heaven may descend through the dark, damp 
valley of denial and doubt, before it ascends into the region 
of upper light, life, truth, and joy. When any one is ready 
to collect such a book of experiences from such conversions, 
I shall be glad to furnish a motto for it out of Shakspeare. 
The motto is what the melancholy Jacques says at the end 
of " As you Like It," in regard to the duke : — 

" To him will I : out of these convertites 

There is much matter to be heard and learned." 

Of these many keys, one is faith. This is the key which 
Peter had. But what sort of faith? That kind, says Jesus, 
which "flesh and blood" does not give, but my Father in 



228 



POWER OF THE KEYS. 



heaven. The only faith which is a key to the kingdom 
within us is that of profound personal conviction. There are 
two kinds : first, that of hearsay belief, which flesh and blood 
gives us ; secondly, personal conviction, or the original sight 
of truth. The first often produces unbelief instead of belief. 
Formal acceptance of hereditary opinions is a kind of dead 
faith which is not faith. The witnesses in our courts are 
obliged to testify to what they have seen themselves : all 
hearsay evidence is ruled out. I think that God rules out 
of his courts all hearsay evidence. I wish the Church would 
do the same. A great amount of infidelity is produced by 
the dead hearsay faith of Christians. Every creed was once 
alive. It sprang all alive from the heart or brain of some 
earnest soul, like Minerva from Jupiter, all aglow with in- 
spiration ; but too often it dies of routine. 

The Church, frequently, instead of conviction, seeks assent. 
An earnest seeker, who doubts because he is seeking, is 
looked upon with fear ; a sceptic, who is on his way to be- 
lief through doubt, is thought to be criminal in that ; a per- 
son who loves truth so earnestly as not to be satisfied with 
words and phrases, who will not say that he believes till he 
does believe, — to him the Church turns the cold shoulder. 
But a man who does not care enough about it to know 
whether he believes or not ; who is ready to accept thirty- 
nine articles, or three hundred and ninety-nine, just as it 
happens ; who in Catholic countries is ready to be a Cath- 
olic, and go to mass ; in Methodist countries, to shout and 
sing, and cry glory ; who in Boston is a Unitarian, and in 
Washington a Presbyterian, — he is the well-beloved son of 
the Church. The Church, usually, is satisfied with assent : 
it does not ask for conviction. 

But all sincere conviction is a key to open the door of the 
kingdom of heaven in the soul. It leads us to belief in the 
reality of truth : that is the good it does. It destroys that 
worst of all scepticisms, — doubt if anything be true or right. 



POWER OF THE KEYS. 



229 



Again : the Church is a key. Its imposing ceremonies, 
its solemn sacraments, its majestic influences, bring peace to 
many souls, and educate multitudes to trust in God and to 
obedience. Yet it is the Church in the Church which does 
it. It is not the dead form, not the dead letter, but the life 
within. If the Church is only a form then it is not a key. 
But. as long as you who are worshippers come together with 
serious hearts, this teaches others ; and they feel and say 
that 44 God is with you of a truth." So it was in the early 
Church, when 4i the multitude who believed were of one 
heart and one soul ; neither said any of them that aught that 
he possessed was his own, but they had all things common." 
Then 44 great grace was upon them all ; " then they " did eat 
their meat with gladness and singleness of heart ; " and then 
44 the Lord added daily to the Church such as were saved." 

In the Epistle to the Corinthians, Paul makes the earnest 
utterance of the whole Church, the united expression of their 
honest convictions, a key to the kingdom of heaven. The 
miraculous and wonderful gift of tongues he thinks less like- 
ly to convert men to Christianity than the prophecy or teach- 
ing of the Church. Prophecy is speaking the truth seen in 
the heart. He says, If the whole Church come together, 
and all speak with tongues, and strangers come in, they will 
think you crazy : but if you all teach, and a stranger comes 
in, he is convinced by what you say ; he sees that you know 
what is in his heart ; he falls on his face, and worships God, 
and declares that God is truly with you. 

I shall never forget an evening which I passed in the 
Cathedral of Antwerp, one of the noblest of mediaeval build- 
ings. 

It was Sunday evening. I was alone in the city of Ant- 
werp. I knew no one in the place, and no one knew me. 
All day long, I had not spoken to a living soul. I had been 
visiting churches, and seeing altar-pieces ; but my heart was 
lonely. In the evening, passing by the great cathedral, I 



230 



POWER OF THE KEYS. 



saw a dim light issuing from a doorway. I went in. One 
part of the vast nave was lighted by a few candles hung 
against the columns. A few hundred people, clustered 
around the pulpit, were listening to a preacher speaking in 
Flemish. The light penetrated only a little way through the 
forest of columns into the solemn darkness of the interior. I 
took a chair, and sat near the little congregation. I under- 
stood scarcely a word of what was said ; but I felt earnest- 
ness and sincerity in the tones of the speaker. I saw rever- 
ence in the faces of the worshippers. I was no longer lonely : 
I felt amono* friends. I felt the human hearts beating around 
me to the same tone as mine ; and I was in communion with 
those worshippers and with God. Their service was to me 
the key to the kingdom of heaven. 

Yet I recollect also how once, in Nice, I found a little 
body of Protestants worshipping in an upper chamber, with- 
out any solemn cathedral, majestic music, or ancient cere- 
mony ; but in their worship, too, being in spirit and truth, I 
found a key to the kingdom of heaven. I entered heaven 
with them in prayer and praise, in faith and gratitude. 

But it is also true, that where two or three meet in the 
name and spirit of Christ, where two or three unite in any 
Christian work, there is also a door opening into heaven. 
Christ is with them, as he promised to be ; and where he is, 
there is heaven. Have we not talked in days gone by with 
dear friends, some of whom have since fallen asleep ? and as 
we spoke of earnest themes, as we talked of things divine, 
has not Jesus seemed to come and walk with us, and our 
hearts burn within us with a joy which was surely heavenly, 
and not earthly? And though these dear friends leave us, 
going on before into that higher world where they shall have 
more of heaven than here, it is yet the same kind of heaven 
they have had already. They have seen God here : they 
shall see him more nearly there. They have known Christ : 
they shall know him more intimately. They have had the 



POWER OF THE KEYS. 



231 



joy of active usefulness, of living insight, of generous affec- 
tion : they shall have more of it there, — more to know, 
more to do, more to love. 

Nature rs also a key to the kingdom of heaven ; for Nature 
is God revealing himself to us in all its majestic order, all its 
boundless variety, all its transcendent beauty, all its deep 
peace. Who has not felt his heart drawn to God by the 
glory of morning, the charm of evening, the solemn night, 
the majesty of ocean, the serenity of the mountain, the ten- 
derness of flowers, and the forest depths, full of mysterious, 
inexplicable influences? " There are many voices in the 
world, and none of them without signification." 

God sometimes touches a hard heart with the fragrance of 
a flower, or with a melody reminding it of childhood. You 
remember what Napoleon said to his marshals, when they 
were sneering at his encouragement of the Catholic worship : 
" Yesterday I was walking in my garden, and I heard the 
church-bell of Ruel ; and involuntarily I was carried back 
for a moment to my innocent childhood. Now, gentlemen, 
if the mere sound of a bell affects thus a man like me, such 
a man as I am, what must be the influence of such associa- 
tions on the general mind?" 

How often does God send trial and sorrow as keys to the 
kingdom of heaven! If even Jesus learned obedience by 
the things he suffered, if even that pure soul went deeper 
into the love of God by the path of trial, if he could only be- 
come perfect through suffering, let us not murmur at our 
trials, which are sent to us that we may be partakers of the 
holiness of God. 

Sometimes little children come to us, bringing in their little 
hands the keys to the kingdom of heaven. The man whose 
heart was perhaps growing hard in the struggle of life ; who, 
unconsciously, was becoming worldly ; whose face, practised 
in meeting men, was gradually becoming rigid in its out- 
lines ; whose keen eye was losing its tenderness, — has had 



232 



POWER OF THE KEYS. 



sent to him these sweet little angels as a voice from 
God: — 

" Trailing clouds of glory do they come 
From heaven, which is their home." 

His heart stows young again with them : his soul is soft- 
ened by their infantile caresses ; his life is checked in its 
tendency ; and they lead him to his Father and theirs. Na- 
ture's priesthood, these little children, in their innocence and 
simplicity, are evermore bringing back the hearts of fathers 
and mothers into a more simple and childlike trust and joy. 
Coming to us, they bring the keys of the kingdom of heaven. 
Going from us. they unlock those sacred doors ; and we, in 
our bereavement, find our hearts drawn up after them to 
God. The heavens, into which they have gone, remain 
open ; and the fragrance and melody of that upper world 
come down to us here, and never leave us again. 

Thus God gives into our hands the keys with which we 
may open heaven to others. Not to Peter alone, not to the 
apostles alone, but to all of us, he says, " What ye hind on 
earth shall be bound in heaven ; what ye loose on earth shall 
be loosed in heaven." Whenever we are faithful to our con- 
victions, true to the light God shows to us, unselfish and 
generous, then we open the gateway of heaven to those who 
are with us. Whenever we are selfish and unbelieving and 
hard, we shut the gateway. The spirit we are in inevitably 
communicates itself even by our voice and tone, and preaches 
to others truth, generosity, humility, faith, or preaches unbe- 
lief, selfishness, doubt, despair. Influence falls from us, at 
every moment, for good or evil. We say, by our state of 
mind, that there is something real in truth, in virtue, in 
love ; that immortality is not a dream ; that heaven is close 
at hand ; that life is rich in great opportunities. We say 
this every moment, when we are in a right state of mind ; 
and, in saying this, we unlock heaven to others, and lead 
them in. Or we say to others, by our formality, by our 



POWER OF THE KEYS. 



233 



coldness, by our self-seeking, that religion is empty ; that 
Christianity is only a name ; that life is a weariness ; that 
all things are vanity ; that love is an illusion ; that the gos- 
pel is a cheat and a lie. And, saying this, we lock the doors 
of heaven ; we turn away from God those who are seeking 
him ; we make infidels and sceptics ; we corrupt innocent 
and childlike hearts by our worldliness. Such eternal con- 
sequences follow our trivial earthly action. So it is, that 
what we bind on earth is bound in heaven ; that what we 
loose on earth is loosed in heaven. 

Let us thank God that there are many keys by which to 
open the blessed door which leads into the heavenly king- 
dom. To one the door is opened in childhood ; and the 
dear little feet go in, and the small curly head is already 
surrounded with the pure glory of a light beaming from the 
presence of God. Another, in youth, drops the trivialities 
and follies of youth, and lifts deep, earnest eyes towards the 
great truths of life and time, of death and eternity. One 
entersjhe kingdom by faithful work : loyalty to duty unlocks 
the door, and he goes in. One finds the key through temp- 
tation, sorrow, sin, remorse, penitence, turning to God in 
hopeless shame, but meeting hope and unexpected joy shed 
abroad in his heart. One rises from the bed of sickness with 
all of his past life closed behind him ; and a new life, filled 
with purer hopes, opening upward into heaven. One is 
moved by the noble words, the holy life, and the rapt enthu- 
siasm of the saints and martyrs, by the utterings of genius 
and the eloquence of fiery hearts ; and follows, with enthusi- 
astic love, their pathway, till they lead him to the mountain- 
heights of holy truth. The words of a dear mother, the 
loving kiss of a dying child, the never-fading remembrance 
of a departed friend, of a noble and generous sister or brother 
gone before us to God, raise some of us above ourselves. 
Such are the multitudinous paths which lead us to God : so 
we come, at last, to Christ, the image of the invisible God. 



234 



POWER OF THE KEYS. 



The air of heaven, even here, begins to fan our heated brow ; 
the music of heaven comes softly down, mingling with our 
daily life ; the light of the upper world shines down into our 
poor human hearts. God be blessed for it all, — for all the 
sorrow, all the joy, all the experience of good and evil, light 
threads and dark threads shooting to and fro across the web 
of human life ! Brothers and sisters, — dear friends of mine, 
fellow- workers in this wonderful world, — let us be fellow- 
helpers through it, till we meet on that higher shore, in that 
larger liberty, and with that fuller peace of rest and action, 
which remains for God's children, beyond the low-arched 
gateway that mortals call death. 



XXL 



THE PROPER AXD THE BECOMING. 

Matt. iii. 15 : " Thus it becometh us to fulfil all RIGHT- 
EOUSNESS." 

WHEN Jesus went to Bethabara to be baptized, John 
the Baptist refused to baptize him. John said, " I 
have need to be baptized of thee ; and eomest thou to me? " 
John had a profound feeling of the holiness and grandeur of 
Jesus. They were cousins; they had known each other as 
children, known each other in youth ; and John felt that 
Jesus was so much holier and better than himself, that he 
was not fit to baptize him. Then Jesus made this answer : 
" Suffer it to be so now : thus it be-cometh us to fulfil all 
righteousness/' What did he mean by it? Why was it be- 
coming in him to do this ? 

There seemed to be no good reason why Christ should be 
baptized. The usual reasons do not, apparently, apply to 
Jesus. Many came to John because they thought him a 
very holy man, whose blessing would help them in some 
mysterious, perhaps magical way. This was not the reason 
of Jesus ; for there is a slight tinge of superstition in this 
motive. Jesus did not expect to be made better by being 
touched by John's hands. Others came to John from a 
moral motive : came as sinners to confess their sin, to re- 
pent of it, to inaugurate a new life better than the old one. 
This was not the motive of Jesus : he needed not to repent, 
confess, or reform. He was free from sin, and needed no 

(235) 



236 



THE PROPER AND THE BECOMING. 



baptism to repentance. Another object of baptism is initia- 
tion. Proselytes were admitted into the Jewish Church by 
baptism ; catechumens are admitted into the Christian Church 
by baptism. This was not Christ's object. He did not 
come to John to be admitted into the number of his disci- 
ples. Some say that he was baptized as a consecration to 
his office ; as an act of self-dedication to the work of the 
Messiah. This could hardly be, since he did not mean to be 
known as the Messiah until long after. 

The only reason which Jesus had for being baptized seems 
to be the one which he gives in our text. It w T as becoming. 
It was not necessary for himself, nor for others ; it was not 
a baptism of repentance, nor of initiation, nor of dedication. 
It was simply becoming ; that is, handsome, suitable, in 
accordance with the circumstances, in harmony with the 
state of things. There was moral grace and beauty in it. 
That was all ; but that w r as enough. 

For in human actions, besides the element of necessity, of 
expediency, of duty, there is also the element of beauty. 
Some actions are morally beautiful, and are to be done for 
that reason. Such was that act of the woman in the gospel, 
who brought her alabaster box of precious ointment to 
Jesus, and anointed his feet therewith. There was no utility 
about it : it did no good, in any common sense. But it was 
" becoming ; " it was beautiful ; it expressed her intimate 
convictions, her love, her reverence, her devotion. Any- 
thing which thus beautifully expresses a true and noble senti- 
ment is becoming ; and, because it is becoming, it is right. 
When David longed for the " w r ater of the well of Bethle- 
hem, which is by the gate/ 3 and his three mighty men brake 
through the enemy's ranks and procured it for him, and he 
would not drink it, but poured it on the ground, saying, " Is 
not this the blood of the men who w r ent in jeopardy of their 
lives ? " that was not a very reasonable action ; there was 
no use in wasting the good w r ater which they all needed ; but 



THE PROPER AND THE BECOMING. 



237 



it was a very becoming action. Many actions are good 
because they are becoming, and for no other reason ; actions 
which political economy and utilitarian morality would quite 
condemn. A clergyman in this city once declined an in- 
crease of salary. Twenty good reasons can be given why 
he ought not to have refused it : nevertheless, it was a be- 
coming action. It had a moral beauty about it : no one can 
deny that. A butcher in Boylston Market declined selling a 
piece of meat to a United States commissioner who had re- 
turned a fugitive, telling him that his money was u base 
money. " So I knew a clergyman who sent back a part of 
his salary which had come from rum-sellers. Both of these 
actions have moral beauty, as expressive of strong convic- 
tions of right, though they may both be quite open to objec- 
tions on the side of political economy or utility. 

But, before going farther, let us stop a little, and analyze 
this term " becoming/' and see precisely what it means. 
The Greek word nyinc*, — to nqinov, — is used in half a 
dozen places in the Xew Testament, and always with the 
same sense. In one place it is translated " comely ; " in all 
other places, fct becoming." Now, the " becoming " or 
" comely" is that which comes to a thing; which suits it; 
which is fit, suitable, congruous, in harmony with it. The 
harmonies of time, place, circumstance, are conveyed by this 
term ; and the English word hints at a law of Xature, a law 
of attraction which a thing exercises over other things that 
suit it, and are in harmony with it, so that they come to it. 
Like draws like : so harmonious persons, actions, and quali- 
ties come together. Perhaps this law includes that which 
causes planets to gravitate to their sun, and that which 
causes crystals to be elaborated slowly, through thousands of 
years, in the depths of the earth, — includes the chemical 
affinities which mingle and arrange the elements of earth ; 
the law which makes seeds and plants to move towards the 
light and the moisture ; which occasions society to organize 



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THE PROPER AND THE BECOMING. 



itself in families, friendships, neighborhoods, and states; 
which causes truth, holy and sacred, to be felt in the depths 
of the soul ; which makes the reason respond to it, the con- 
science move to it, the heart cleave to it ; which, in fine, 
causes man to worship God, and to serve his neighbor, be- 
cause he was made for this piety and charity, and because it 
suits his noblest instincts so to do. So the world becomes a 
kosmos, a beauty, when every part of it is filled with 
harmony. 

And why was it becoming in Jesus to be baptized by 
John? In two ways, — as a testimony to John; and as an 
expression of his own inward purpose. 

John was a true and a noble character ; faithful and 
strong as steel ; ready to act and to bear for what he 
thought the truth. Jesus, in coming to be baptized by him, 
took sides with him ; showed that he believed him in the 
main to be right ; manifested his sympathy with him ; ap- 
proved of his work ; showed a modest willingness to receive 
all he had to give. This was a becoming act in Jesus ; and 
it is always a sign of true greatness and nobleness thus to 
recognize desert, and bear a willing testimony to it. Not 
that John the Baptist had not great faults: but he was a 
noble person, and doing a right work ; and Jesus, instead of 
any captious criticism of his manner of acting, took openly 
his side. 

When a great controversy is going on, in which great prin- 
ciples of truth, justice, liberty, are involved, the noble- 
minded man wishes to act as Jesus acted; openly to take 
sides with those who are, in the main, in the right. A 
small-minded man, on the contrary, prefers to find petty 
faults, and refuses to cooperate, because some things are said 
or done which he thinks in bad taste or bad temper. 

When ideas and principles are on one side, and what we 
consider culture, taste, gentlemanly conduct, on the other, 
some persons take the latter ; but the highest souls choose 
the former. 



THE PROPER AND THE BECOMING. 



239 



Some years ago, in those days we all remember, when the 
abolitionists were very odious in Boston, the Governor of the 
State recommended to the Legislature to pass a law to punish 
the writing and printing of what were called incendiary pub- 
lications. The abolitionists asked to be heard in opposition 
to the passage of this law. A hearing was granted them ; 
and Mr. Garrison, Dr. Follen, and others, appeared before 
the committee to argue against the proposed law. While 
the argument was going on, the door of the room opened, 
and Dr. Channing appeared in the entrance. He was then 
at the height of his fame, the most conspicuous citizen of 
Boston, — having achieved a European reputation, and receiv- 
ing visits every week from distinguished foreigners. Look- 
ing around the room, he discovered where Mr. Garrison was 
seated, — at that time, probably, the most unpopular and 
odious person in the State. Passing by the dignified repre- 
sentatives and respectable citizens present, Dr. Channing 
went up to Mr. Garrison, took him by the hand, and took a 
seat by his side. In doing so, he seems to me, unconsciously 
perhaps, to have followed the example of Jesus Christ in 
the case before us. Dr. Channing and Mr. Garrison differed 
from each other in many respects, and Mr. Garrison had not 
been sparing of his criticism of Dr. Channing's views ; but, 
feeling a profound sympathy with the main purpose and con- 
viction which animated this reformer, Dr. Channing would 
not allow any minor differences, in matters of opinion or of 
taste, to prevent him from bearing his testimony to the 
essential justice of the cause. When an attempt was to be 
made to crush freedom of speech in Massachusetts, and to 
silence the voice which claimed liberty for the captive, 
Channing deemed it becoming to take his place by the side 
of this champion of the slave. 

But almost every good thing has its counterfeit, and so 
the becoming has its counterfeit. The counterfeit of the 
becoming is the proper. The morally beautiful is replaced 



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by the conventionally correct. Propriety is a kind of minor 
morality, and governs society in social life, as public opinion 
governs it in public life. Thus mothers say to their chil- 
dren, 46 You must not do that, my dear." " Why not, 
mamma?" "Because it is not proper, my child." This 
argument is deemed final and unanswerable. 

The most becoming things are not always the most proper 
things ; for they are apt to be violations of etiquette. It 
was becoming of Jesus to be baptized; but it was hardly 
proper. John was not a fit person, in the view of pro- 
priety, to keep company with, — a mere fanatic ; a man liv- 
ing in the wilderness ; living on locusts and wild honey, and 
dressed not in soft raiment or broadcloth. He had a devil, 
so they said ; was evidently crazy ; was a mere enthusiast, 
if he was not an impostor. He probably wanted an office ; 
or, at any rate, was preaching doctrines which led directly to 
riots and insurrections. He did not speak at all respectfully 
of the dignitaries and distinguished people. He called the 
scribes and Pharisees " serpents " and " a generation of 
vipers ; " though they were, in fact, the chief people in Jeru- 
salem. Under these circumstances, propriety evidently for- 
bade Jesus from giving him any countenance : but it was 
becoming, nevertheless, to go and share his unpopularity, 
and partake his odium ; and so Jesus went. 

The sources of the proper and the becoming are different. 
That which is becoming flows from an instinctive perception 
of what is morally beautiful. It leads us to fulfil all right- 
eousness ; for it penetrates to small things. It makes life 
graceful and gracious by the multitude of little acts and 
words of kindness which it inspires. It is an invisible spirit 
of sympathy, faith, reverence, and modesty, which informs 
the manners, and makes one courteous, taking out of life 
whatever is harsh and hard. 

Seek, therefore, that which is becoming rather than that 
which is only proper, for the becoming includes the proper, 



THE PROPER AND THE BECOMING. 



241 



but not the reverse. That which is truly becoming may 
indeed not always appear proper, though in the highest sense 
it may be so : for the 'proper means only that which is cus- 
tomary, or which other people do ; but the becoming is that 
which is suitable to present circumstances and present needs, 
whether it has ever been done before or not. 

Many things which Christ and his disciples did seemed 
highly improper to the Pharisees, who were men of religious 
punctilio and etiquette. They did not think it proper that 
he should cure a sick man on the Sabbath, or that his disci- 
ples should pluck ears of corn on that day. They thought it 
improper for the disciples not to fast, and still more improper 
that they should sing hosannas on his entrance into Jeru- 
salem. To drive the buyers and sellers out of the temple 
was not proper ; and it was by no means proper to call the 
Pharisees serpents, and a generation of vipers. But, though 
these things were improper in view of religious pedantry, 
they were highly suitable under the circumstances, and 
therefore were becoming. For as propriety, based upon cus- 
tom, is the highest law of conventionalism, so the becoming, 
founded on the harmony of things, is the largest and highest 
law of realities. 

When Wesley began his great work, which revived the 
decaying religious life in the English nation, his course in 
many respects was thought very improper. In those days of 
drunken curates and fox-hunting rectors, when Paley had to 
advise the clergy not to drink and play cards in ale-houses, 
it shocked all England to hear of lay-preaching and services 
in the open air. I know not a more striking scene than that 
of John Wesley preaching at Ep worth, in the churchyard, in 
the evening twilight, standing on his father's tomb, when he 
was shut out of his father's church. " They accuse us," 
said he, " of indecorum, because we preach in the open air. 
I go into their churches, and find drowsy congregations and 
sleepy preachers : in that I see indecorum. But I have 
16 



2-12 



THE PROPER AND THE BECOMING. 



preached on the hill-side to many thousand people, who were 
so attentive, that when a wall fell down, upon which a great 
many people were sitting, it made no disturbance in the 
congregation. 5 ' 

Propriety in the pulpit is not always equivalent to what is 
becoming therein. If a minister wishes to do what is proper 
in the pulpit, he can very easily accomplish that task. All he 
has to do is to keep in the line of safe precedents, and do as 
others have done already. He may defend with some energy 
all the accepted and popular opinions of his Church ; he may 
wax warm against heretics, and may even be slightly and 
handsomely severe in speaking of them. He may also con- 
demn as strongly as he will the Jewish scribes and Pharisees. 
He may be sarcastic against Pontius Pilate. He may de- 
nounce Roman Catholics and Infidels ; and may say almost 
anything he chooses against Hume, Voltaire, and Rousseau. 
But let him beware how he censures the vices of his own 
time and his own community. He may show the people the 
sins of their grandfathers, and they will listen ; but, if he 
tries to show their own sins, some will always say it is 
improper to do so. Taking a man from Africa to make a 
slave of him, he may call piracy ; but taking a man from 
Boston to make a slave of him, he must not call kidnapping : 
if he does, some alderman will walk out of church.* 

Amasis, King of Egypt, whose story is told us by He- 
rodotus, seems to have been a wiser man than many of 
these discontented parishioners. Before he became king, 
he was disposed to pilfer ; and, when accused of taking 
people's property, he would appeal to the oracle of the 
place, which would sometimes acquit and sometimes con- 
demn him. When, therefore, he became king, he paid 
no attention to the gods and oracles that had acquitted 
him, nor contributed to their temples ; considering them of 

* This sermon was preached in the bad days of 1851. Since then 
what a change ! 



THE PROPER AND THE BECOMING. 



243 



no consequence, and as lying oracles. But to such as con- 
victed him of theft he paid the highest respect, considering 
them as truly gods and truth-tellers ; for of what use are 
gods and pulpits that do not tell us the truth ? 

But I consider nothing more becoming in the pulpit than to 
speak the truth, — simple, pure, plain truth. It might have 
been quite improper in Nathan to rebuke the great King 
David, and to be guilty of the personality of saying, " Thou 
art the man ! " but it was becoming. It was no doubt thought 
very improper in Jesus to drive the money-changers out of 
the temple, and to say harsh things about those highly re- 
spectable people, the scribes and Pharisees. It was not 
proper for Luther to burn the pope's bull, for Horace Mann 
to expose the iniquities of slavery, or for John Pierpont to 
set forth the miseries and woes which come from making 
and selling rum. These things were not thought proper ; 
for you will observe, that, of all sticklers for propriety, those 
are the chief who make gain by any sort of wrong-doing. 

Nations, as well as individuals, can do that which is 
becoming, sometimes transcending the limits of utilitarian 
prudence and propriety. When, in the Irish famine, the 
ship "Jamestown" crossed the ocean to carry food, political 
economy might not wholly approve it ; but surely it was 
noble and becoming. And when the English nation, on the 
1st of August, 1838, emancipated eight hundred thousand 
slaves, and gave a hundred millions of dollars to compensate 
their masters, it was not wise, perhaps, in the sense of 
political economy ; but it was wise in the wisdom of heavenly 
truth and justice. 

When Florence Nightingale found that the food and com- 
forts destined for the sick soldiers were kept locked up and 
unused, because no one knew who had authority to dispense 
them, she ordered the doors to be broken open, and the pro- 
visions to be taken to the hospital. That was certainly 
improper : it was also certainly becoming. 



2U 



THE PROPER AND THE BECOMING. 



It sometimes takes a high soul and a great nature to ele- 
vate the thing which is improper, and to make it becoming. 
What more improper than for Joan of Arc to ride in man's 
clothes at the head of an army, and offer herself to lead sol- 
diers into battle? yet the act, so evidently improper, is the 
most beautiful event in the history of a thousand years. Yet 
to imitate that act would require another soul as pure and 
brave as hers. 

The becoming flows, as we have seen, from an instinctive 
perception of what is morally beautiful. It leads us to fulfil 
all righteousness ; it penetrates to small things ; small acts 
and words of kindness flow out of it ; it makes life graceful 
and gracious ; it is an invisible spirit of sympathy, of love, 
of faith, of hope, of reverence, of modesty, of joy, which in- 
forms the manners, and makes one gentle, courteous, and 
kind ; taking out of life all that is harsh and hard. 

Instead, therefore, of aiming at what is proper, aim at 
what is becoming. 

As regards children, what is becoming in them is to have 
a spirit of reverence and of confidence conjoined ; a spirit 
which respects parents, teachers, superiors ; which rever- 
ences all that is above them, but is not checked in that 
charming confidence and freedom which makes the grace of 
childhood. Instead of surrounding them with bristling pro- 
prieties, show them how to respect others ; and teach them 
to be simple, sincere, and truthful themselves. These two 
graces are natural to childhood : only let them not be 
repressed. 

In young men, the spirit which makes the becoming is a 
spirit of modesty and manliness, which, when combined, 
form the elements of moral beauty, — a modesty which 
avoids conceit, arrogance, and pretension ; and a manliness 
which is ready to do its work bravely, and to take hold of 
life with courage and self-reliance. 

In young women, the becoming spirit is the same. We 



THE PROPER AND THE BECOMING. 



245 



wish to see in them freshness of thought, and openness of 
manner ; we wish to see also the spirit of respect and con- 
sideration for all that is around them. The charm of 
womanhood is this combination of expansive sympathies and 
fresh impulses, with quick consideration for the feelings and 
rights of all others. 

In all we do, the becoming, the beautiful, that element 
which makes heroes in heroic times, and gives romantic 
beauty to life, is the spirit of reverence and the spirit of 
freedom. Life is full of awe and mystery. God, the Eter- 
nal and Infinite, is always near. Death surrounds us and 
attends us ; the inscrutable mysteries of a great hereafter 
are always close at the door. Therefore reverence and 
religious awe are becoming to man ; reverence for God's 
presence everywhere, — for Him who filleth all in all. No 
one but respects the man who respects God ; no one but 
sees the beauty of the truly religious character. The reli- 
gion of propriety and of usage is cold and cheerless : but the 
religion which sees the wonders and glories of eternity gleam- 
ing ever through the portals of time — this commands the 
respect of all ; is felt to be comely, heroic, and admirable. 

u It becometh us to fulfil all righteousness ; " to respect 
every manifestation of the truly religious life ; to give our 
testimony to all parts of Christian faith and action ; but espe- 
cially to live in that spirit of mingled reverence and freedom 
which shall enable us to comply with propriety or to tran- 
scend propriety ; always to live near to God ; and always to 
do that, and speak that, which is beautiful, gracious, and of 
good report. 



XXII 



THE FAVORITE TEXTS OF JESUS. 

Luke iv. 17 : "He opened the book, and found the place." 

HEN you read an interesting book, it becomes more 
interesting if you find that some one whom you love 
and respect has read it before you, and has marked, here and 
there, any favorite passages. The first time I read Spenser's 
" Fairy Queen," it was in Kentucky, and in a copy which 
had belonged to the poet John Keats. It was marked all 
through with his pen at those places which especially inter- 
ested and pleased him. I enjoyed the book all the more for 
those marks. The pleasure you find in this, arises, I think, 
from the fact that you are reading two minds at the same 
time, — the mind of the author, and that of the previous 
reader. You seem to look into the heart and thought of him 
who has gone before you ; and, whenever you come to his 
pencil-mark, you say, u Why was he interested in this?" 
and you stop a moment to read in your friend's mind what 
his thought was about the author. 

Now, suppose that we could have the very copy of the 
Hebrew Scriptures which was used by Jesus when a child, a 
boy, a man, at Nazareth, — the very rolls, marked in the 
margin with his hand at his favorite passages : could any- 
thing be more interesting than this ? Would it not let us 
into the mind of Christ to see what texts he loved the most 
in all the volume? How very interesting, how deeply 
affecting, would it be to see the Bible which our Lord used. 

(246) 




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247 



I was interested in John Keats' s marks in " Spenser," be- 
cause he was a poet too. A poet reading a poet seems to be 
a good guide ; but Jesus, the prophetic soul, reading \he 
books of the great prophetic souls who went before him, in- 
terprets them to us best of all. 

We have not the Bible that Jesus used ; but we have 
almost the same thing : we have his favorite passages in the 
Old Testament given to us in another way. We have his 
quotations from it preserved for us in the New Testament. 
All may not be preserved ; but we have about forty passages, 
quoted by Jesus from the different Jewish Scriptures. 

I have thought it might be interesting and useful to look 
at these, or at some of them, and so get a glimpse into 
the mind of Jesus through this little window. 

Jesus has quoted about thirty-nine passages from eleven 
books of the Old Testament. From each of the five books 
of Moses — Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, aud Deu- 
teronomy — fifteen passages ; nine passages from the Psalms ; 
seven from Isaiah ; eight from Jeremiah, Hosea, Malachi, 
and Zechariah. 

He has quoted nothing from the historical books, from 
Joshua to Esther inclusive ; nothing from Job, Proverbs, 
Ecclesiastes, or the Song of Solomon ; nothing from twelve 
of the prophets, including Ezekiel and Daniel. 

Let me remark, before proceeding further, that, in quoting 
from the Old Testament, our Lord thinks more of the spirit 
than of the letter. He quotes sometimes from the Hebrew, 
and sometimes from the Septuagint Greek translation ; and 
of some passages it is hard to say whence they are quoted. 
Sometimes he puts together two texts from different places, 
as when he says, " It is written, My house shall be called a 
house of prayer for all nations ; but ye have made it a den 
of thieves." The first half is from Isaiah, the last from 
Jeremiah. Therefore he has not any idea of using these 
passages logically as proof-texts, or controversially as argu- 



248 



THE FAVORITE TEXTS OF JESUS. 



ments adapted to convince doubters ; for, in such a case, it 
would have been necessary for his purpose to quote with 
precision. The object for which he adduces these passages 
is moral and spiritual, for which no such accuracy is needed. 

CHRIST FULFILLING SCRIPTURE. 

He sometimes spoke of himself as fulfilling these Scrip- 
tures. I think we often have a false idea of what is meant 
b} 7 this. ' We suppose that it means to adduce a prediction 
which is literally accomplished by a fact. We suppose that 
Jesus did certain things merely to fulfil the predictions of 
Scripture. Thus we might suppose that Jesus healed dis- 
eases to fulfil one prophecy of Isaiah ; that he kept silence 
about himself to fulfil another ; and spoke in parables to 
fulfil a third.* 

But this is not the Scripture meaning of " fulfil." Such 
a fulfilment of prophecy as this would have no value, and 
reflect no honor on prophecy. When an astronomer predicts 
an eclipse to take place on a certain day, at a particular hour 
and minute, and it does happen at that very time, we see in 
it a proof of knowledge on his part ; but if God should 
interfere, and cause an eclipse to happen then, merely to 
confirm the astronomer's prediction, it would not be any 
proof of his science. So, if Jesus worked miracles or 
spoke parables merely because it had been predicted that he 
would do so, it would not redound to the credit of the proph- 
ecy. If you predict that, on a certain day, I shall preach 
a sermon on a certain text, and I select that text in order to 
fulfil your prophecy, do you not see that it would not give 
any one faith in your prophetic talent? 

There is another sense in which the word M fulfilled " is 
used in the New Testament. Jesus fulfilled Scripture in 



* The usual formula on these occasions is, "All this was done, 
that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet," &c. 



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249 



another way. To " fulfil," in the Scripture sense, is " to 
carry out perfectly : " it is to develop a principle or truth 
to its ultimate result. Thus " love is the fulfilling of the 
law ; " that is, it carries law out to its last results. "Fulfil 
ye my joy ; " that is, carry it fully out. 4i He will fulfil the 
desire of them that fear him ; " that is, give them all they 
desire. " It becometh us to fulfil all righteousness ; " i. e., 
carry it all out perfectly. Thus the law is fulfilled, obe- 
dience is fulfilled, joy is fulfilled, in this way, by being 
carried to perfection. 

Jesus fulfils all things in the law and the prophets by 
carrying each thing fully out to its perfection. " I came 
not to destroy, but to fulfil." He sees a germ of good in all 
things : he comes to fulfil it. He destroys nothing. He 
does not destroy anything in nature or in man, or in human 
life, or in the religions of the world : he fulfils them all. 

Thus it was that Jesus did not destroy, but fulfil, the 
Hebrew law. He took up its essence into his own doctrine, 
and dropped its accidental form. He fulfilled its morality by 
a higher morality. The law written on stone was fulfilled 
by a law written in the heart. He changed it from a law of 
negation and prohibition into one of attraction, of positive 
good. Thus, when the law said, " Do not murder," Christ 
fulfilled it by saying " Love your enemy." 

MERCY, AND NOT SACRIFICE. 

One of his favorite passages — which he quotes, indeed, 
twice, and in reference to two different matters — is from 
Hos. vi. 6 : "I desire mercy, and not sacrifice ; and the 
knowledge of God more than burnt-offerings." The first 
time was when Jesus was reproved for eating with publi- 
cans, and said " Go, and learn what that meaneth, I will 
have mercy, and not sacrifice." The other time was when 
his disciples plucked ears of corn on the Sabbath-day. The 
Pharisees blamed them ; but Jesus said, " If ye had known 



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what this means. I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, you 
would not have condemned the guiltless." Evidently, he 
had thought of it often, and deeply. What does God wish 
of us? Does he wish anything from its? Does he wait 
and long to have anything? He wishes for mercy to man. 
not sacrifice to himself: good-will to our brethren, not wor- 
ship to himself. Sabbath-keeping is good ; but love is bet- 
ter, — care for man is better. Do we realize this? I am 
afraid not. We do not know now. eighteen hundred years 
since Christ said it. twenty-six hundred years since Hosea 
said it. what it means. There is meaning in it yet. which 
the Church has not exhausted. Jesus was deeply convinced 
that good to man was the best worship of God. God is 
wishing for this : God is wishing that you and I should do 
more for those who need than we now do. 

MAN LIVES BY TRUTH. XOT BY BREAD. 

Another favorite passage of Jesus is found in Deut. 
viii. 3. It teaches that God led the Jewish nation forty 
years in the wilderness, to humble and prove it, and to kDOW 
what was in its heart ; and goes on thus : ** He humbled 
thee and proved thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed 
thee with manna, which thou knewest not. neither did thy 
fathers know ; that he might make thee know that man doth 
not live by bread only ; but by every word that proceedeth 
out of the mouth of God doth man live." In the Hebrew 
text, the original expression is " every thing : *' in the Sep- 
tuagint it is u every word. 55 Jesus here follows the Septua- 
gint. 

In reading Deuteronomy, his eye caught at this. How 
does man live? TVhat is man's true life? Xot of the body, 
but of the soul. "What is his real food? Truth, the sight 
of truth", coming from God. — this is his real life. 

If, then, he must sacrifice everything else. — all comfort, 
success, appreciation, reputation : if he must be laughed at,* 



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251 



set aside, counted as nothing ; if his life seems a failure ; if 
he have many enemies and few friends, — all this is nothing, 
if he really sees the truth ; for this will make him strong 
and happy. He can live on this, and live joyfully. He will 
have no sense of sacrifice : all will be glad and joyful in his 
heart while he sees the truth. 

In the hour of his great temptation, these words of Moses 
came to him ; and it had become an intimate conviction with 
him. so that he resisted the temptation easily, and said to 
Satan. " I do not need bread : I need to be right. I am not 
hungry fur anything this world can give ; I am hungry for 
truth : my longiug is for that." 

So afterwards he said to the Jews (with a reference to 
this passage in his mind), 4i Moses gave you not that bread 
from heaven : my Father giveth you the true bread from 
heaven." Miraculous bread does not come from heaven ; 
for, after all. it is material food, not spiritual. Nothing 
comes from heaven but what is spiritual. 

This quotation also illustrates his meaning in the petition, 
" Give us this day our daily (necessary) bread." Truth is 
daily bread, more necessary even than earthly food ; and is 
always to be understood as included in this petition. 

GOD THE GOD OF THE LIVING. 

The passage (Matt. xxii. 32 ; Mark xii. 26 : Luke xx. 
37) quoted from Exod. iii. 6, 16, is very interesting and 
important. 

God in this place says to Moses, " I am the God of Abra- 
ham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." Jesus 
takes this as the proof-text of immortality in the Old Testa- 
ment? TThy did he do so? 

It is well known that there is little to be found in the Old 
Testament concerning a future life. Some writers say that 
nothing is there. All that the Jews learned about it they are 
said to have learned in the Babylonish captivity. Yet some 



THE FAVORITE TEXTS OF JESUS. 



other passages Jesus might have quoted. There is. for in- 
stance, the famous passage in Job, " I know that my Ee- 
deemer liveth." &c. There is that in Daniel, 44 Many of 
them who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some 
to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting con- 
tempt. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness 
of the firmament ; and thev that turn many to righteousness, 
as the stars forever and ever." 

But Jesus passed by these texts, which are commonly 
quoted as proof-texts of immortality, and took this one. 
Why? If God is our God, he says, we cannot die. He is 
a living God. He speaks of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as 
being his. The moment he calls them his, they must be 
alive. For God to think of them would make them alive, 
if they had been dead a thousand years. 

Is not this the only guaranty of life? It is the interest 
felt by God in each particular soul, the love of God for each 
soul. If every soul is a separate being to God, with a sepa- 
rate special value, a name of its own, then each soul must 
live. If he knows you and me, knows us as he has made us, 
and made us for himself, then we cannot die. 

Why, if you have taken pains to carve a figure, or draw 
a man's face with a pencil, you do not quite like to destroy 
it. You have put some of your self into it. God has put 
something of himself into each of us. We, therefore, all 
live to him ; for we all live from him. 

This is the highest proof of immortality ; but it is a proof 
not addressed to the logical understanding, but to the higher 
reason. It shows us what Jesus regarded as the true 
authority of the Old Testament in proof of doctrine. 

The common mode of proof by theologians is to say, 
" Here are so many texts in which such a doctrine is stated 
by Moses. Job, Solomon, and Micah ; but these are inspired 
men ; iherefore God says it ; therefore, whether you can 
understand it or not, you must believe it." This is arguing 
like a pedagogue, not like a Christian teacher. 



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But Christ does not quote Scripture thus. He does not 
concentrate a battery of texts, torn from their contexts, with 
which to confuse and prostrate an opponent. Instead of this, 
his argument demands the presence of some religious insight 
ill order to be understood, and it is convincing in proportion 
to the amount of faith in the hearer. The word of Jesus 
profits only when mixed with religious faith in those to whom 
he speaks. To feel the force of this passage, for example, 
one must know something of the nature of love, human and 
divine ; something of the nature of the human soul, and its 
worth ; something also of what life really is. 

THE MESSIAH. 

There is a peculiar interest in noticing the passages which 
Jesus quotes from the Old Testament, in regard to the 
Messiah, as applied to himself. 

Luke iv. 18, 19, — taken from Isaiah (lxi. 1, 2). Jesus 
quotes the following passage : " The Spirit of the Lord is 
upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel 
to the poor : he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to 
preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight 
to the blind ; to set at liberty them that are bruised ; to 
preach the acceptable year of the Lord." 

In this passage, which Jesus selected from the book of 
Isaiah to read at Nazareth among his own people, and which 
he applied to himself after having read it, we gather the view 
he himself took of his own work. 

There are many other passages in Isaiah, usually applied 
to Christ, and supposed to be predictions of the Messiah, 
which Jesus might have quoted, but did not. There is the 
passage concerning u Immanuel," in the seventh chapter. 
There is the passage (Isa. ix. 6) in which Christ is usually 
believed to be predicted, and in which he is called " Won- 
derful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, 
the Prince of peace ; " but Jesus does not select this passage. 



254 THE FAVORITE TEXTS OP JESUS. 



Then there is the famous passage (in Isa. xi.) in which is 
described the Branch that was to grow out of the stem of 
Jesse, — a passage which contains a beautiful description of 
the coming of Christ, and of his kingdom of peace ; but even 
this he passes by. More remarkable is it that he entirely 
omits to notice the famous prophecy (in Isa. liii.) of the 
man of sorrows, except by a casual allusion. Still less does 
he refer to the prophecy of a triumphant and conquering 
Messiah, who overcomes his enemies, and subdues nations ; 
but he selects this passage, in which the Messiah is described 
as sent to preach to the poor and to heal the broken-hearted. 
Evidently he had often dwelt in his mind upon this view of 
the Christ. He saw himself called to be the Messiah in this 
high sense ; and in this sense he really became the Messiah. 

There is another passage concerning the Christ, which he 
quotes (Matt. xxii. 44) from the hundred and tenth Psalm. 
In this Psalm, David calls the Christ, whose coming he fore-, 
sees, " my Lord." Jesus asks the Pharisees how David 
could have called his own descendant " my Lord." This 
question, which is left unanswered both by the Pharisees and 
by Jesus himself, shows that he had meditated upon its mean- 
ing. He saw that the Messiah was not to be merely* a con- 
tinuation of David, or a reproduction of David : he was to 
go on from the stand-point of David to a much higher one. 
David was already so glorified in the Jewish mind, that the 
Jews mostly expected in the Messiah only another David ; 
but Jesus had seen intimations in the Old Testament itself 
of that which he saw clearly in the prophetic instincts of his 
own soul, — that the day of the Messiah was to transcend by 
a long interval that of David. 

Put together these two passages, in one of which Jesus 
had found from Isaiah that the work of the Messiah was to 
comfort and help the lowly ; and in the other, that by this 
work he was to become David's Lord. The two, thus 
united, result in the central idea of Christ's teaching, that he 



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255 



who humbles himself shall be exalted ; that the work of the 
Messiah is to seek and save those who are lost. Thus, no 
doubt, by the revelations made to his own soul, and by medi- 
tations on these profound passages of Scripture, Jesus grad- 
ually formed in his mind the idea of the true Messiah, and 
saw that he was sent to fulfil it. This was his mission in 
the world ; for this God had sent him. He did not accom- 
modate Scripture to his idea, as is the fashion sometimes to 
say ; nor did he change his idea to suit the Scripture : but 
he saw that in essence and spirit they were identical. When 
he said, " Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day ; and 
he saw it, and was glad ; " and then added, u Before Abra- 
ham was, I was the Christ," — we see that Jesus, medi- 
tating on the promise to Abraham, that in his seed all the 
nations of the earth should be blessed, saw that this prophecy 
could only be fulfilled by a Jew, who, like himself, had risen 
wholly above the distinction of Jew and Gentile, and to 
whom all mankind were brethren, because children of one 
Father. 

Observe also the authority which the Master claims for 
himself as the Son of man, — that is, as the man in whom 
humanity took its full development ; who, because perfectly 
Son of man, is therefore Son of God. For that which is 
perfectly human comes into a perfectly filial relation to the 
Father. He who stands in this relation to God and man 
stands higher than the Scripture, because at the source from 
whence the Scripture came. He has the same spirit from 
whence the Scripture proceeded. Hence Jesus considered 
himself to be, not the servant, but the master, of the Sab- 
bath ; not the servant, but the master, of the Ten Command- 
ments. In Matt. xix. 18, he rearranges them, putting 
" Honor thy father and mother " after the rest, instead of 
before them ; and adding an eleventh commandment, out of 
Lev. xix. 18 : " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 
Evidently, our Lord, in reading Leviticus, had seen this 



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command shining like a star in the midst of the ceremonial 
and ritual ordinances. It left its place in Leviticus, and 
joined the ten great commandments, at his behest ; for he 
was Lord of the Scripture as of the Sabbath, because he was 
the Son of man. 

This very phrase — " Son of man " — was taken by Jesus 
from Dan. vii. 13. In this passage, the Messiah is repre- 
sented as " a man" coming " with the clouds of heaven." 
and standing before the " Ancient of days" to receive an 
everlasting dominion which shall never pass away. There 
Jesus could see himself to have been foretold by the prophets. 
He saw himself as a man. receiving an everlasting dominion, 
but coming " in the clouds of heaven ; " for the " clouds of 
heaven," in the language of the old Testament, indicate the 
obscurity which surrounds the providences of God. When 
Jesus predicts his future coming as to be u in the clouds of 
heaven," he means that it will be without " observation." 

The subject I have spoken of is one for a book, not for a 
sermon. 

These thirty-nine quotations from the Old Testament de- 
serve to be weighed carefully, till we learn what Jesus found 
in each of them. His meditations on them are full of light 
for us all. TTe shall find that to him the Old Testament 
was a book most valuable, not for what it said, but for what 
it suggested ; that he searched in it for the spirit, and not 
for the letter ; that he did not value its prodigies and won- 
ders ; that he did not regard its long procession of marvels 
and portents ; that all its savage wars he omits to notice ; 
and that of the worldliness, infidelity, and unbelief of its peo- 
ple and princes he says nothing. Solomon, for example, who 
is to the Mohammedans so much, to Jesus is nothing. 

The texts most quoted by our modern Orthodox teachers 
and writers Jesus never quotes at all. 

Jesus took the best out of the Old Testament as out of 
everything. This is the lesson of his quotations. He passes 



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257 



by the low, the mean, the false, and finds the good. Find- 
ing the good, he found the true; for only that which is good 
is really true. 

How differently have others studied the Old Testament ! 
Some study it to find proof-texts of this or that doctrine ; 
some to find arguments in favor of old abuses, — slavery, 
intemperance, polygamy, despotism, persecution, war, witch- 
craft ; some to find faults, errors, contradictions, absurdities, 
in its letter ; some to justify low views of God as an arbitrary 
Being, of man as a degraded being. But Jesus studies these 
inspired writings to find the best, highest, and purest in all 
things. So he finds in them a divine spirit ; he searches in 
them for a profounder sense of God's love ; he develops them 
all to a higher point ; and he thus fulfils everything which 
they contain. He makes them full of meaning and full of 
life. He takes out of the hard shell its living kernel ; he 
supersedes much of them, and values always the practical 
part more than the ceremonial. 

17 



« 



XXIII. 



HE WHO EXALTETH HIMSELF. 
Luke xiv. 11 : " He that exalteth himself shall be abased, and 

HE THAT HUMBLETH HIMSELF SHALL BE EXALTED." 

"\TTHEX Newton saw the apple fall, he saw in it the law 
? I of gravitation, by which planets, ever falling towards 
the sun, are forever carried onward along their mighty orbits. 
When Jesus saw the guests at a wedding putting themselves 
forward to get the best places, he saw the law of spiritual 
gravitation, by which every soul finds its right place in the 
universe. It is the privilege of genius to detect in the small- 
est incident the workings of the largest principles. Nothing 
was beneath the notice of Christ. This is well illustrated by 
a story told in one of the apocryphal gospels. Jesus, it is 
said, was walking on a dusty road, on a hot day, behind his 
disciples. A horseshoe lay on the ground, and when Peter, 
who preceded the rest, came to it, he kicked it disdainfully 
aside. Each of the other disciples, in passing, did the same. 
But when Jesus arrived, he lifted it from the ground, and 
put it in his sleeve. Presently they came to a blacksmith's 
shop. Jesus drew out the horseshoe and laid it down, and 
the blacksmith handed him a small piece of money. Then, 
walking forward, they passed a stand on which were exposed 
some cherries for sale. Jesus laid down the piece of money, 
and the keeper of the stall gave him a handful of cherries. 
He put them in his sleeve, and, going forward, preceded the 
company. The sun became hotter. They crossed a dusty 

(258.) 



HE WHO EXALTETH HIMSELF. 



259 



plain, on which was no shadow. Then Jesus, as he walked, 
dropped the cherries on the ground, one after the other. 
When Peter and the other disciples came up, they stooped 
and picked up the cherries, one by one, and ate them. When 
all had thus been eaten, Jesus turned and said, with a smile, 
to Peter, " If you had been willing to stoop once to pick up 
the horseshoe, you would not have been obliged to stoop so 
often to pick up the cherries." 

So also, Jesus, in the parable of the Pharisee and publi- 
can, illustrates the same law. Beautiful story ! perpetual 
rebuke to spiritual pride — perpetual benediction on modest 
self-distrust ! In every age the Pharisees have taken the 
chief seats in the Church of Christ, thanking God that they 
were saints, elect, orthodox, pious professors, and in every 
age the publicans have stood afar off, not professing any- 
thing, or thinking themselves good for anything ; and this 
holy parable from Christ's lips has carried warning to the 
one, and comfort to the other. 

Jesus always praised humility. But what is humility? 
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush ? Is it to declare 
ourselves the chief of sinners ? Is it to profess to be vile, 
and to have no goodness in us? No. Humility is not to 
look down, but to look up. It is to keep our eyes fixed on 
something higher and nobler than we ourselves are ; not to 
seek for ourselves place, or praise, or power, but to be ready 
to work anywhere, anyhow, for any good cause and right 
purpose. 

" He who exalteth himself shall be abased." This is a 
universal law. He who endeavors to rise by force of will, 
by cunning, by trying to seem rather than to be, by trying to 
get things rather than to do things — he may, indeed, rise. 
He may get the uppermost seat at the feast ; but he cannot 
keep it ; and while he has it he does not enjoy it, for he 
knows that it does not belong to him. He has a giddy 
and unsure habitation, building not on substantial value, but 



260 



HE WHO EXALTETH HIMSELF. 



on cunning, luck, and force. Some people try to exalt them- 
selves socially — to get the chief seats at the feast of society. 
There are men and women in New York and Boston who 
expend as much talent and energy in the effort to get into 
certain circles of society, as would enable them to become 
accomplished scholars, distinguished writers, or virtuous 
Christians. They have a sort of success, but what does it 
amount to ? They do not feel at home in the position they 
have gained. They are always afraid that some more hon- 
orable man or woman will arrive, and they be obliged to 
give them place. For in society, also, everything finds its 
level, and every one goes to his own place at last ; each 
one goes where he belongs. Some people try to exalt them- 
selves politically. They devote themselves to the art of 
rising. In everything they do, they are thinking of what it 
will lead to. They try to get offices, no matter what ones, 
not to do the work of the office, but to make it a stepping- 
stone to something else. They forget that the word office is 
derived from the Latin word officium, and means a duty. 
They try to be selectmen, to be chosen members of the 
common council, or school committee, or legislature ; and 
when elected to any of these places, they take no interest in 
the work which is to be done, but only wish to display them- 
selves, to be seen and talked about, and so get chosen to 
something else. 

We have had men in this country who seemed sent for 
a warning. Such usually devote themselves to rising. Com- 
monly, as politicians, each is careful to be a Democrat, — 
not that he believes in human rights or human liberty, for 
he does not. But the word Democrat is popular, so he is a 
Democrat. He fawns and flatters men who can help him ; 
he becomes dough and putty in the hands of his leaders, 
and says, " Here I am — nothing at all; make of me what 
you will. I am ready to do any dirty work you have to do." 
He is one who never, by any accident, gives way to an 



HE WHO EXALTETH HDISELF. 



261 



honest utterance of real conviction, to any rash sally of 
enthusiasm. So he winds his way up. and at last obtains 
the end of his ambition — perhaps becomes President of the 
United States ; and, sometimes in that awful hour which 
sifts men's souls, it becomes evident that he has no soul. 
He stands in that exalted position simply to be seen to be 
unfit for it. When a man is wanted more than ever before, 
there is no one there — only a party politician. He exalts 
himself, and is abased. Yet he is not a traitor — he is 
simply nothing, trying to seem something. 

Meantime, there is another person whose life has been 
spent, not in seeming, but in doing. He has not been trying 
to exalt himself, but to do his honest day's work, whatever 
it is, whether splitting rails, or arguing for justice and free- 
dom against Judge Douglas. So the nation, looking around 
for a man, sees him, and says, " Friend, go up higher." 
And he goes up, with his serious face, goes up to do, amid 
derision, hatred, opposition, his appointed task, until, having 
done it, having given safety to a nation and freedom to a 
race, God says to him, by an assassin's hand. i; Friend, go 
up higher," and he goes up to take his place among the 
immortals. 

The religion, also, which exalts itself shall be abased : that 
which humbles itself shall be exalted. The religion which 
boasts that it alone is catholic and apostolic ; the creed which 
declares itself to be the only orthodox one ; the church and 
denomination which claim to have the truth, because of their 
superior piety, their multitude of missions, their many and 
wonderful works ; which say to the Master, i; Have we not 
prophesied in thy name, and in thy name cast out demons, 
and in thy name done many wonderful things?" — those 
churches which exalt themselves shall often be abased. 
ChrLst may say to them, 44 1 never knew you." But if there 
be anywhere a company of brave souls, of loving hearts, 
who try to do good to all men in the spirit of Jesus, then, 



262 



HE WHO EXALTETH HIMSELF. 



whether they call themselves by any Christian name or not, 
whether they claim to be religious or not, — they may call 
themselves Freemasons, or Odd Fellows, or Temperance 
Societies, or Abolitionists, or any other name they will, — yet 
if they humbly and honestly do Christian work, then they 
shall be exalted. For the text proclaims the universal law 
of spiritual dynamics, that all moral forces shall find their 
level, that real goodness shall be known at last as real, that 
sham goodness shall be seen at last to be a sham. For 64 there 
is nothing covered which shall not be revealed, nor anything 
hid which shall not be known." 

This is always the astonishing thing in real greatness, — 
its simplicity, its love for the realities which have no prestige 
about them. This is the one thing which is in common to 
all great writers and great works of genius. They deal with 
the humblest realities. They go out in the highways and 
hedges, and bring the poor, and maimed, and halt, and blind 
to the banquet of genius, — the marriage of Thought and 
Love. Shakspeare takes a negro, and racks his soul with 
jealousy ; takes a merchant of Venice and a sharp Jew, and 
reads their hearts and thrills ours. If he chooses a king, or 
any illustrious person, he drops all the royal robes, and 
shows us the man inside of them, just like ourselves. Such 
books as the Pilgrim's Progress, Don Quixote, Robinson 
Crusoe, derive all their undying charm, from age to age, 
from the simple human feeling that is there. So thinkers 
and writers also divide themselves into two classes : some 
are exalted, and some exalt themselves. Some aim at 
effect, put on the spangle and tinsel of gaudy rhetoric, but 
are forgotten presently and disappear. Mr. Tupper wrote a 
book of Proverbial Philosophy, which deceived all mankind 
for a short time. His phrases were so ambitious, and his 
style so sounding, that people did not at first see how trivial 
were his thoughts. So his book lay on the centre-tables, in 
fine binding, for a year or two ; then a more honorable man 
came, and Tupper began, with shame, to take a lower seat. 



HE WHO EXALTETH HIMSELF. 



263 



Everything finds its level. If a man is anything, it is 
sure to be found out ; if a man only seems to be something? 
that also is sure to be found out. It is so in society, litera- 
ture, business, religion. The author of the recent book on 
the life of Jesus, called " Ecce Homo," says that nothing 
surprised Paul more in the character of Jesus than this 
humility. Gifted, as Jesus was, with those miraculous 
powers by which he could at any moment exalt himself to be 
the object of universal admiration, become at once the idol 
and ruler of the nation, he used them so quietly, so unosten- 
tatiously, in the service of the poorest, to heal the sick in 
out of the way places, that he succeeded in being unnoticed. 
He sought the shade, as others seek notoriety. " Being in 
the image of God," having all these divine powers, he did 
not grasp any divine honors, but made himself nothing, 
taking the form of a servant, and submitted to the death of 
the cross. " Wherefore," he continues, u God has highly 
exalted him, and given him a name which is above every 
name ; that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, 
of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under 
the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus 
Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Yes ! 
Paul has seen and stated in this place the very secret, the 
inmost mystery, of the power of Jesus. He became the 
King of the world, not because of his miracles, as many 
think, but in spite of them. The Cross of Christ, by which 
the world is crucified to us, and we to the world, if Ave are 
Christians, was no fictitious death of a God-man, to appease 
the wrath of God, but it was this deliberate humbling of 
himself to the realities which underlie all appearances. It 
was giving up all apparent success for the sake of real 
success. His religion went so high that it went up out of 
sight. The people did not think he had any religion : they 
called him a blasphemer. His self-denial ran so deep, that the 
people did not see that : they called him a gluttonous man and 



264 



HE WHO EXALTETH HIMSELF. 



a wine-bibber. The Pharisees, — they were the religious 
people in all men's eyes, — they prayed at the corners 
of the streets, while Jesus went apart into some lonely 
place to pray. It does not appear that Jesus had formal 
prayers with his disciples : they had to ask him to teach 
them how to say their prayers, " as John taught his disci- 
ples." And then the prayer he taught them was the shortest 
liturgy ever given by any founder of a religion. Instead of 
being contained in volumes, it is compressed into lines. The 
Pharisees fasted twice in a week. Jesus did not allow his 
disciples to fast at all, simply because, as he said, it would 
not be natural for them to do so. He was not willing to 
have them fast merely as a tradition or a custom, when 
there was nothing in their hearts corresponding thereto. 
But we, here in Massachusetts, keep up an annual Fast, 
which is wholly unnatural to us, simply because our ances- 
tors had one which was natural to them. And so also, 
Jesus went so deeply into the great Sabbath of spiritual 
rest, that he neglected the outward Jewish Sabbath. He 
was called a Sabbath-breaker, because he said, " Go and 
walk, and do anything else which is good for you on the 
Sabbath, for the Sabbath is made for man." We have not 
got so far as that now, for our good Pharisees are trying to 
stop the running of street cars, — not on the ground that 
people do not need them, or that it is better for mankind to 
rest on the Lord's Day, but on the ground that running 
of street cars was forbidden by Moses in the fourth com- 
mandment. 

The humility of Christ consisted therefore in this, that 
he went into reality in all things. He wanted real re- 
ligion, real goodness, real love ; not its name and form. 
In order to have the reality, he sacrificed the appearance ; 
he was content to be called a gluttonous man, and a wine- 
bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners ; he was contented 
to be thought a radical and disorganizer ; he was contented 



HE WHO EXALTETH HIMSELF. 



265 



to die on the cross, his work only half done ; contented to 
appear to fail, and to seem utterly defeated. And therefore, 
because lie humbled himself. " God has highly exalted him, 
and," as Paul foresaw, " given him a name above every 
name." Before that divine name of Jesus, every knee shall 
bow ; to his religion of humanity and truth, all minds shall 
adhere. Things in heaven ; all that is most lofty — the 
saints of all ages, the seraphim with many eyes, and cheru- 
bim with wings to protect them from the blaze of God's glory 
— shall bow before the simple human religion of the Man 
of Nazareth. Things on earth, — science, art, literature, 
philosophy, — all shall come to see in Jesus their Master, 
because all of them, to attain their ends, must follow the 
laws he has laid down, and work in the spirit of his wisdom 
and humility in order to be exalted. And things under the 
earth : the things which have failed, which have been lost, 
the poor lost souls, the broken hearts, the sinners who de- 
spair of hope, those who have gone down into the hell of 
evil, and believe it eternal, these also shall come to Jesus in 
faith and a new hope. For he has gone down to find them, 
he has humbled himself to their needs also, and came to 
seek and save the lost. 

The old Church had an article in its creed which has since 
become unintelligible, and has dropped out of it ; namely, 
that Christ descended into hell. I think, however, it is 
strictly true. When he was tempted in all points as we. he 
descended into hell. In order thoroughly to understand 
man, and save those who are tempted, it was necessary for 
Jesus to go down into the hell of evil desires and passions 
and wills. He was able to sympathize with the hell of evil 
in the human heart, to know the force of man's fiercest pas- 
sion, his maddest rage, his infuriate jealousy, his cruel 
hatred, his sensuality, his falsehood. Preserved pure and 
unstained from pollution by the power of truth and love 
in his soul, he yet could, by the largeness of his mind and 



266 



HE WHO EXALTETH HIMSELF. 



heart, go down into it, and in the agony of the garden feel 
all its terrible power. Therefore, there is no sinner so low 
but Christ can reach to him the hand and help him. And so 
he becomes the Friend and Master also of " things under the 
earth ; " souls which have gone down below the level of 
humanity, and become as the brutes which perish. 

Herein lies the chief power of the gospel, — that it goes 
down to seek and save the lost. It teaches that God is essen- 
tially something higher than power or law. God is iove. 
He is the universal Father. He leaves the ninety and nine 
good and pious sheep in the wilderness, and goes after the 
one wicked sheep till he find it. A brether minister once 
described God as leaving the impenitent to themselves, and 
going away with his saints to another part of the universe, 
and there making a heaven for the pious, where they could 
have, I suppose, their little prayer meetings and innocent 
amusements. But the Lord Jesus describes God somewhat 
differently. According to him, God leaves the good people 
by themselves, and goes to find the bad ones. 

If one expects to have a heaven from which any of his 
brethren are to be excluded, he will have to dispense with 
the company of God and Christ in it, for God and the Lord 
Jesus, the apostles and martyrs, the holy company of saints, 
and the army of heroes who have lived and died to save 
souls, these will be all outside of that exclusive heaven, 
looking after the lost sheep who have gone astray. 

This is what every true minister of the New Testament 
preaches. Not a sermon shall he utter without the savor of 
this doctrine. He may preach hell, he must preach hell ; 
for do we not almost every day, of our own free choice, go 
into hell? But he always adds, " If I make my bed in hell, 
thou art there." God does not abandon his universe, nor 
give up any part of it to rebels and traitors to make a hell 
of forever. Why, when our civil war began, and we seemed 
helpless before it; when we had neither troops nor arms; 



HE WHO EXALTETH HIMSELF. 



267 



when the rebels had seized and occupied the southern forts ; 
when Europe took their side, and gave them moral aid 
and comfort, did the nation, did Abraham Lincoln, its Presi- 
dent, accept that situation, and say, " Let them go and make 
a hell for themselves, by themselves ; a hell of slaveholders 
and slaves"? No: this nation said, "We will not give 
up a single shovelful of sand from the most southern cape 
of Florida, not a citizen from under the flag, though he be 
only a paralytic negro in a rice swamp of South Carolina." 
Do we resist secession and rebellion till they are conquered, 
till rebels return to loyalty, and seceders become citizens? 
and do we think that God will let us go and not follow 
after, through unnumbered years and unmeasured worlds, 
till he finds us ? No : the new covenant teaches otherwise. 
The sun of our solar system not only maintains all the 
planets in their orbits, swinging on soft axle and moving in 
obedient circles around him, drawing light in their golden 
urns from him, but he also reaches out with the long arm 
of gravitation into outside spaces, into outer darkness, seek- 
ing for the poor lost sheep which has gone astray — the 
forlorn comet, a dim and distant speck. Myriads of miles, 
in the depths of the abyss of space, the wandering star has 
gone, but the long arm of gravitation reaches it, and the 
delicate fingers of that arm pick up every smallest misty 
atom, and presently the comet begins to move again towards 
the sun, and by and by comes faster and loses its vagueness, 
and turns .itself into a planetary form, and flames in the 
midnight sky, a wonder of beauty. Does God care that not 
a nebulous mass of misty light shall escape from the great 
attraction of the skies, and shall he allow a single man, 
made in his image, capable of endless progress, to escape 
the infinite attraction of his love forever? 

Seek, then, what is real. The world is empty, barren, 
unsatisfactory, unless we seek reality and truth. All suc- 
cess, all fame, all position otherwise obtained, is an apple 



238 HE WHO EXALTETH HIMSELF. 

of Sodom, which looks lovely, but when we bite it, fills the 
mouth with ashes. Come to Jesus, and learn of him. Lie 
at his feet, O child of earth, whose hopes have been disap- 
pointed, who hast found nothing good in life, whose heart 
has gone about to despair of all its labor under the sun. 
Life is sweet and full of joy when you look at it aright, as 
Jesus did. Come to him and he will give you rest. Come 
to him, not in a mere profession, but by doing as he did, by 
following in his steps ; loving the praise of God more than 
that of men ; caring for truth and substance, not for show ; 
not trying to exalt yourself, but humbling yourself to do 
good to the most lowly. Do not run after happiness or 
pleasure, but seek to do good, and then you will find that 
happiness will run after you. The day will dawn full of 
expectation, the night fall full of repose. This world will 
seem a very good place, and the world to come a better place 
still. 



XXIV* 



RELATION OF CHRIST TO THE SOUL. 



1 Peter, i. 8: <; TThom having not seen, ye love; in whom, 

THOUGH NOW TE SEE HIM NOT. YET BELIEVING, YE REJOICE 
WITH JOY UNSPEAKABLE, AND EULL OE GLORT." 



HE subject upon which I am to speak to-night is, The 



-1- Relation of Christ to the Soul." It is a great and diffi- 
cult subject ; so difficult that I should not venture to attempt 
it. had I not long since learned, that when we try to do our 
best, God often says something to the hearer's heart which 
is better than our thought and deeper than our word. Let 
us. therefore, pray that while we are speaking together on 
this great theme, we may be all instructed by that Spirit 
which prefers, before all temples, the pure and upright 
heart. 

Can there be any personal relation between our soul and 
Christ? Can we reach across the ages, and give him our 
hand and take his? Can we be caught up (as Paul was) by 
the Spirit into the third heaven, and meet Christ, and talk 
with him? or is there any one who shall go up and bring 
Christ down to us, that we may see him. and hear him, and 
speak with him? "When Jesus was in the world, he said, 
; * Come to me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I 
will ^ive you rest." We might have none to him had we 
been living then ; but can we go to him now? The preach- 




* A sermon preached in Holhs Street Church, Feb. 10, 1567. 

(269) 



270 RELATION OF CHRIST TO THE SOUL. 



ers say, " Go to Jesus ; " the Church evermore cries out, 
" Go to Jesus." But what does this mean, and how is it 
possible ? 

No doubt Christ may be our teacher to-day by means of 
the words which he uttered eighteen centuries ago. Two 
hundred millions of men take their ideas concerning God, 
duty, and immortality, from Mohammed and his Koran, 
though he has been dead twelve hundred years. Three 
hundred millions in China arrange their lives according to 
the notions contained in the Four Books, which were written 
by Confucius and Mencius five centuries before Christ. 
Some men take Plato for their master in philosophy ; some 
take Socrates, Epictetus, or Antoninus. Their teaching 
guides our intellect ; but they themselves are in no relation 
with us. With Milton and Paul we have a more personal 
feeling ; but still they are standing on the other side of the 
great gulf of years: we do not know them.; they do not 
know us. But about Christ we feel otherwise. Somehow, 
it seems possible that we should belong to him, and he to 
us ; that we should know him, and he know us ; that we 
should love him, and he love us ; be his friends, his fol- 
lowers, and be safe while we are thus belonging to him. 

Now, is there any rational ground for this feeling and this 
faith? To show that there is, shall be the subject of this 
sermon. 

But let me first remark that, in supposing this to be true, 
it is not necessary to assume that Jesus Christ is the Supreme 
God. Many argue, with very little logic, that, if we suppose 
Christ to be so present with his disciples everywhere as to 
commune with them, he must be omnipresent ; and that, if 
we suppose him to know their thought and heart, he must be 
omniscient ; and that, if we suppose him capable of saving 
the souls of those who trust in him, we are assigning to him 
Divine Omnipotence. But to be spiritually present with 
men in all parts of the earth is not to be omnipresent ; for 



RELATION OF CHRIST TO THE SOUL. 



271 



this earth, compared with the universe, is but as a graiu of 
sand compared with the great globe itself. I am now spir- 
itually present to all your minds by means of my voice and 
your listening ears. If I can be present thus by my thought 
at the same moment to five or six hundred persons in this 
hall, why may not higher spirits, by some higher medium, 
be present, at once and invisibly, to thousands or millions ? 

Xor need we think it strange that God should give to one 
created soul the power to save from sin, sorrow, unrest, 
despair, those who take him as their friend. Every day, in 
Boston, twenty-five thousand children go under the influence 
of teachers, who exercise a wonderful power to lead them 
upward into a love of truth and good, or to leave them to go 
some other w 7 ay. To these teachers are given the keys of 
the kingdom of heaven, and what they bind on earth is 
bound in heaven ; what they loose on earth is loosed in 
heaven. 

Many years ago, a teacher in a country town in Massa- 
chusetts saw a boy come into his school, whom he knew to 
be one of the worst boys in town. He determined, if he 
could, to make a good boy of him. So he spoke kindly to 
him ; and the boy behaved well that day. The next morn- 
ing, the prudential committee (as he is called) came in, and 
said, " Mr. Towne, I hear that bad fellow, Bill Marcy, has 
come to your school. Turn him out at once. He will spoil 
the rest of the boys." " Xo, sir," replied the teacher; "I 
will leave the school if you say so, but I cannot expel a boy 
so long as he behaves well." So he kept him, and encour- 
aged him, and confided in him, till Bill Marcy became one 
of the best boys in the school. And afterwards, whenever 
William L. Marcy came from Washington, he took pains to 
go and see his old teacher, Salem Towne, and thank him 
for having been the means of saving him, and making him 
the man he was. 

Now, in the order of Providence, this teacher had the key 



272 



BELATION OF CHftlST TO THE SOUL. 



of the kingdom of heaven, as regarded that boy. If he had 
refused to unlock the door, the poor child would, in all 
human probability, have been a castaway, so far so this life 
is concerned. God acts through mediums and mediators. 
He puts his treasure into these earthen vessels of human 
love. 

Time, change, absence, distance, break off no genuine 
relations. The love which the interposition of a continent 
or an ocean can dim, which the separation of years can 
alter, never was love. I had a friend once (a woman), who 
was the friend of my better nature ; who taught me aspira.- 
tion, taught me the value of thought, made me believe in the 
worth of life, showed me the joy of growth and progress ; 
one whose soul was so large, so deep, so generous, that she 
reigned like a queen among the highest intellects and hearts. 
She left the earth, one stormy night, sixteen years ago. 
But she is as near to me to-clay as she was then. The life I 
live, the thoughts I think, the acts I perform, are all colored 
by influences which came from her mind into mine. If six- 
teen years cannot separate souls, why should sixteen hundred 
years separate them ? When our friends leave us for another 
world, they are less with us outwardly, but more with us 
inwardly. We carry them with us in our heart. The 
mother, whose every thought turned towards her children, 
we know cannot cease to think of them when she has gone. 
They not only remember what she was, but feel what she is. 
And if, on her birthday, they should love to assemble, and 
have a little family feast to her memory, where would be the 
harm? If, then, the mother's supper would be so natural, 
why should the Lord's Supper be so strange? 

The Lord's Supper ! What a wonderful institution it is ! 
What has kept it alive these eighteen hundred years — this 
ceremony, so alien to all our habits of Western thought? 
Wherever Christianity extends, people come together, and 
sit a while, and take a little bread and wine, in memory of a 



RELATION OF CHRIST TO THE SOUL. 273 



young Syrian murdered in Asia by the order of a Roman 
proconsul. What strange charm still holds us to this poetic 
symbol, — us, the most prosaic of races, — while empires 
fall, creeds change, philosophy, science, art, and literature 
are all revolutionized? How does he fascinate our heart, 
across the weltering ocean of time, unless it be by a personal 
affection, born out of the good we have each received from 
him ? 

What, then, is this personal relation? Jesus described it 
under "different figures. Sometimes he is the door, through 
which we pass to goodness and God ; sometimes he is the 
vine, into which we are grafted, and the sap from which 
feeds inwardly our life, and makes us grow and bear fruit ; 
sometimes he is the good shepherd, going before us, while 
w r e follow him ; sometimes he is bread from heaven and 
bread of life, on which we feed. All these figures indicate 
that he works on humanity, not merely from without, as a 
plastic power, to form, but as an inward influence, to vital- 
ize. The language of the apostles indicates their sense of 
this double relation. Sometimes they speak of being in 
Christ, and sometimes of Christ being in them. " If Christ 
be in you;" "Christ in you, the hope of glory;" or, "If 
any man be in Christ, he is a new creature." 

All this implies that every Christian stands in a special 
relation to Christ, and Christ to him. He is a disciple, and 
Jesus his teacher ; he is a soldier, and Jesus his captain ; 
he is a sinner, and Jesus his saviour. 

Now, is this so, or is it not? 

The only question is one of fact. There is no reason to 
doubt that there may be such a personal relation between a 
soul on earth and one in heaven. There is no antecedent 
improbability in the assumption that God may have com- 
mitted this work to Jesus of Nazareth, to be the central 
human figure of the human race, till all mankind have been 
brought, to God as a father, and to each other as brethren. 
18 



274 



RELATION OF CHRIST TO THE SOUL. 



To some one great soul has always been assigned by Provi- 
dence one duty in history ; to another, a different one. 
Socrates and Plato, Columbus, Dante, Bacon, Milton, 
Newton, Shakspeare, Washington, Lincoln, each has had a 
special work to do, not for their nation only, but the human 
race. Moses, Elijah, Confucius, Zoroaster, Mohammed, — 
these stand higher still, appointed to be religious leaders of 
whole races of men for thousands of years. Why, then, 
may not one have been appointed as the central point, 
towards which all these rays of truth, goodness, and beauty 
shall converge, and find their synthesis, and he belong to 
every man and to all time? 

The only question is one of fact. There is no antecedent 
improbability in it. Has Jesus, as a matter of fact, per- 
formed this work ? Does he perform it now ? In every age 
and every land, it has been the universal and profound con- 
viction of Christians that Jesus has been made to them the 
open way to God ; that through him, somehow, they find 
forgiveness ; through him, hope ; through him, a new life in 
their heart and soul. They all repeat, out of their own 
experience, the words, " The life I now live in the flesh, I 
live by faith in the Son of God." This is the testimony of 
the great intellect of Paul, who did the most marvellous 
work, perhaps, ever done on earth : taking a Semitic religion 
from Syria, and, by transferring it to the Indo-European 
race, making it a religion for mankind. " I do all things 
through Christ, who strengthens me," is his declaration. 
So, also, testifies Aurelius Augustine, the fiery African soul, 
who melted down by his burning zeal the Greek theological 
speculations, and changed Christianity again from a creed 
into a life. What are the confessions of Augustine but one 
prolonged cry to Christ as his Inspirer, Master, and Friend ? 
Luther, whose words shook all Europe to its roots, and 
changed its social, political, intellectual, and moral condi- 
tions, tells us that ail his strength, thought, love, came from 



RELATION OF CHRIST TO THE SOUL. 



275 



Christ. And in lowly life, in humble homes, by the bedside 
of dying Christians, the faith which upholds them is, that 
God, through Christ, is loving and forgiving them. Shall 
we set aside all this great record of human experience as 
empty and unmeaning? Shall we step out of this great cur- 
rent of Christian faith, which contains in it the best life and 
progress in the world, and fall back on the Vedas, or Seneca, 
or Epictetus ? We stiffen and congeal when we do so. 

To substitute for Christianity a theism based on the attri- 
butes of God, or a spiritualism founded on the doctrine of 
universal inspiration, is not to go forward to a more ad- 
vanced position, but to relapse to a lower one. The ampler 
doctrine is the truest. That which accepts Father, Son, 
and Spirit ; means, end, and substance ; Christ the way to 
the Father ; Christ's work the condition of the coming of the 
Spirit ; the belief which does not destroy the past creed, but 
fulfils it in a higher form, — this is that which alone can 
permanently satisfy human w 7 ants. It is not by dropping 
Christ that we can reach God or live in the Holy Spirit. 
For through him we have access, by the Spirit, to the Father. 

Perhaps it will be said that this doctrine is not Unitarian- 
ism ; at least, not that to which we have been accustomed. 
Perhaps not. All Unitarians, so far as I know, consider it 
their highest privilege to quarrel with Unitarianism ; why 
should I be deprived of that privilege? The essence of 
Unitarianism is freedom and progress, forgetting things be- 
hind, and reaching out to those before. Still, I think I have 
said nothing to-night inconsistent with that one fundamental 
and essential doctrine of Unitarianism, that the Father alone 
is the supreme God, and that Jesus Christ, in his person, 
was a man, made in all respects like his brethren. In re- 
garding him as the central figure of the human race, and the 
medium through whom life came to every soul ; in consider- 
ing communion with him, through faith, the privilege of 
every human being, so that each shall have in him a personal 



276 



RELATION OF CHRIST TO THE SOUL. 



Friend, Helper, and Saviour, I have said nothing inconsistent 
with the essential teachings of our fathers, though I may 
have carried their faith in Jesus farther and to a higher plane. 

Some persons, however, seem to think that it is a cleroga- 
■* tion from God to give this place to Christ. They say, " Let 
us go at once to God, without any mediator. " So be it. 
But some of us feel the need of helps, of steps, of guiding 
influence. There are hours in which God seems far off, and 
the heavens black. There seems a wall between us and the 
heavenly Father. It is the wall of law, built up block by 
block out of our own deeds ; and how shall we pass through 
it? If Christ, then, is a door, if he opens the way through, 
and shows us the Father, shall we refuse to go through the 
door, because we wish to u go at once to God without any 
mediator " ? When you have difficulties in this life you do 
not refuse the advice, help, sympathy of a friend ; we do not 
despise the stairs in going to the top of the house ; we be- 
lieve in mediation as regards all other things, why not as 
regards religion ? 

The apostle Paul, who probably never saw Jesus, except 
in the scene of his conversion, who declares that he did not 
know him according to the flesh, is among all the New Tes- 
tament writers the one who stands in most constant intimate 
communion with his Master. How he exhausts lan^ua^e to 
express the entire union of his soul with that of his Saviour ! 
" I am crucified with Christ ; nevertheless I live ; yet not I, 
but Christ liveth in me ; and the life which I now live in the 
flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God." " Of him are 
ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and 
righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." " God 
hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge 
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." " Who 
shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, 
or distress, or peril, or nakedness, or sword?" "I am per- 
suaded that neither life nor death, nor angels nor principali- 



RELATION OF CHRIST TO THE SOUL. 



277 



ties, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor 
height, nor depth, nor any creature, shall be able to separate 
us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." 
The apostle Paul, outwardly, was separated from Christ, just 
as we are, by the whole interval between time and eternity. 
Yet the most intimate friendships of earth pale before the 
glowing ardor of his love to his Master. Need there be 
anything essentially different between our relation to Christ 
and his ? 

There are hours in the life of most serious men in which 
they feel the burden of sin, the sense of a diseased nature, 
the feeling of separation from God, the feebleness of will 
which resolves, and repents, and resolves again, and breaks 
its resolutions, and sinks back into the old habitual evil. 
More than all we feel the absence of love — the cold, hard, 
mechanical nature of our best goodness. God seems so far 
off. Life's duties seem so hard and difficult. We need a 
friend, a helper, one who has been through it all, and who is 
able to give us something of his courage and hope. In such 
hours we need Christ. It does not suffice to say to us, " Go 
directly to God." The very difficulty is, that we cannot find 
our Father. Then, how unspeakably precious is it to feel 
that Jesus Christ not only lives, but is near us ; that he is 
not enjoying his triumphant bliss away in a distant heaven, 
but he is watching to save our souls, and to fill our hearts 
with the peace of God ; that all he asks is that we shall trust 
him, believe in him, follow him ; and that he will help us to 
say, " My Father." In such hours of darkness and bewil- 
derment, I turn to Christ, not as a past but as a present 
Saviour ; not as a distant friend, but as one close at hand ; 
not as one who finished his work eighteen hundred years 
ago, but as one who is still sympathizing with us, still carry- 
ing our sorrows, and bearing our griefs. This is the truth in 
the daily sacrifice of the mass in the Roman Church. It 
shows Christ coming to us, every day, to die anew for our 



278 



RELATION OF CHRIST TO THE SOUL. 



sins. Considered as a symbol, it indicates a great truth — 
that Jesus is doing every day his work of suffering love, of 
divine sacrifice for every human soul. 

This, also, is the truth in the doctrine of the second coming 
of Jesus. At first the disciples expected a speedy outward 
return of their Master to establish an outward kingdom. 
They misunderstood the images in which he spoke of it, 
and stuck in the unprofitable letter of his prediction. The 
Church has done the same, looking for an outward coming 
of Christ in the clouds of the sky, instead of a spiritual 
coming in the clouds of heaven ; that is, in the awful depths 
and heights of growing human convictions, aspirations, affec- 
tions. Christ comes now every day. When he rose from 
the dead, he rose out of a visible and historic life into an 
invisible, spiritual influence. i4 1 go away, and come to 
you," he said. Jesus Christ, with all his apostles, and mar- 
tyrs, and saints, with his disciples of every age, have not 
goue to enjoy a passive happiness in some distant heaven. 
They are near the earth, for his work on earth is not yet 
done. God's kingdom has not yet come, nor is his will yet 
done here as it is done above. Every knee has not yet 
bowed to Christ, and love is not yet triumphant over selfish- 
ness and evil. The apostle says, " He shall reign till he has 
subdued all things under him, and then he shall give up the 
kingdom to God, even the Father." Jesus, therefore, is not 
afar off ; he is near to us all every day ; the head of the 
family in heaven and on earth : and, therefore, we may 
believe in his spiritual nearness to each of our souls. 

By this view, do we separate ourselves from God? ZSo : 
but we come all the nearer. Yfhen Christ comes to us, he 
comes to briug the Father. We look at him. and we see the 
Father. That is his essential work. He is the means, the 
Father the end. We come inwardly to Christ, and pass 
through him, as through an open door, to God. M If any 
man love me," he says, % * he will keep my words, and my 



RELATION OF CHRIST TO THE SOUL. 



279 



Father will love him, and we will come and make our abode 
with him." 

In every hour of sin we are brought into relation with 
Christ. When the spirit is willing, but the flesh weak ; 
when the law in the members conquers the law of the mind, 
and we feel empty, unnerved, incapable of good, — then we 
say inwardly to Jesus, " Brother, bring us to the Father. 
We have lost our Father, help us to find him again. Help 
us into his peace and joy. Give us the sweet sense of his 
forgiving and saving love." And when we thus speak to 
Christ, and invoke his help, the sense of pardon, peace, and 
strength comes, and we say, " When 1 was weak, then I 
was strong ; " and because we have been forgiven much, we 
love much, and Jesus comes to be a near and dear friend to 
our heart and soul. He is not now a historic Christ, of 
whom we read in the gospels, who lived in Galilee, and 
worked miracles, but he ever liveth to make intercession for 
us, and is with us always, even to the end of the ages. 

Do you say that this is praying to Christ, and that we 
have no right to pray to any one but God? All prayer 
which stops short of God is idolatrous. But what is the 
moral difference between asking favors of an unseen and 
absent being, and asking them of a present being? We ask 
spiritual help and comfort from our friends about us here, 
and that is right. Does it become wrong to ask it of those 
who have passed beyond the vail ? Xot if we have reason 
to believe, as we have in the case of Jesus, that they have 
power from God to give us the aid we ask, and if all is re- 
ceived, not as from them, but through them, from God. The 
Jews said that Jesus blasphemed in forgiving sin. " Who 
can forgive sin, but God only?" But he replied that " the 
Son of Man had power on earth to forgive sin." He has 
that power still, exactly as he had it then, the power to com- 
municate the sense of pardon, to reconcile us to God ; but it 
is a power given him by his Father, as he says, 44 Of mine 



280 RELATION OF CHRIST TO THE SOUL. 

own self I can do nothing ; as I hear, I judge." So when 
we ask Christ for pardon and help, it is asking it of God 
through him. 

And in the dark hours of sorrow, bereavement, and lone- 
liness, what a comfort to know that we have this invisible 
comforter and friend near to us always. When the dear 
child is taken from our arms, when the father and mother 
who loved us as none else ever loved, have gone ; when the 
affection which made life glad has turned to ice ; when 
earthly hopes have faded, when sickness weakens body and 
mind, what a comfort to think that we have a friend in 
Jesus, who has trod the narrow way before us, and can sym- 
pathize with all human sorrow. 

This relation of the soul to Jesus, so full of strength and 
sweetness, comes from faith and obedience. We must be- 
come Christ's by following him, by accepting his work as 
ours, his aim as ours. We cannot do much for him, but we 
can do something. We can do something every day to cause 
him to reign over human hearts and lives. If we take an 
interest in his little ones, in his poor, his outcasts, we are 
following him. We follow him whenever we speak a kind 
word or do a kind act in his name. 

The work which Christ did, and is doing, is to bring us to 
God and to man, to reconcile religion and morality, piety 
and humanity. It is to fill all of life full of the sense of 
God's presence ; to remove all estrangement, all separation ; 
to make the atonement which unifies man and God, man and 
man. This work he does, not by an outward process of 
civilization mainly, but first of all by sending this vital power 
into each individual soul. When we are willing to follow 
him, when w r e are able to trust in him, then he becomes our 
Saviour. The love to him springs up naturally and necessa- 
rily in the heart. Then he is as near and dear to us as the 
nearest and dearest earthly friend. When he brings us to 
God, he makes the Universal Father also near ; he gives us 



RELATION OP CHRIST TO THE SOUL. 



281 



a childlike piety, which prays to God without ceasing, as the 
child prattles incessantly to its mother all day long. Follow 
him, trust in him ; this is the whole condition of his influence. 

u We follow thee, clear Master, 
Not only when, to-day, 
We meet thee in the temple, 
To read, and praise, and pray. 

" We follow thee to-morrow, 

When, through the busy street, 
Before, to shop and office, 
Move on the blessed feet. 



" And when, at night, returning 
To quiet room and chair, 
We sit with those who love us, 
The Master 's with us there. 



" We follow thee, O Master, 
Wherever thou mayst go ; 
Through sunshine and through shadow, 
Through blessedness and woe. 

"And ever tending upwards 
Along the happy way, 
We follow thee through age and death 
To heaven's eternal day." 



XXV. 



THE MAN OF SIN. 



2 Thess. ii. 3: "Let no man deceive tou by any means: for 

THAT DAY SHALL NOT COME, EXCEPT THERE COME A FALLING- 
AWAY FIRST, AND THAT MAN OF SlN BE REVEALED, THE SON 
OF PERDITION." 

*T"\7"HO the Man of Sin is no one has ever decided. 



▼ T Protestants say he is the Pope ; Catholics say he 
is Martin Luther ; Grotius said he meant Caligula ; others 
say he was Simon Magus, the Jewish war, Xapoleon Bona- 
parte, or the French Revolution. 

It is evident there is no end to such interpretations. If 
you make the Man of Sin mean a particular person or event, 
you may find five hundred in history, one of which is just 
as likely to be intended as another. 

Suppose we try a different method. Perhaps Paul did not 
mean a particular person or event, but some evil principle, 
some wrong tendency, which was to arise. The apostle, in 
his First Epistle to the Thessalonians, had spoken of the 
coming of the Lord Jesus as of something near at hand, 
as something which he and they might both be alive to see. 
In his Second Epistle he tells them not to lose their self-pos- 
session, or to be too much excited with the expectation of 
this coming of Christ as something which was immediately 
to take place. He tells them that other things must happen 
first, among which, especially, will be the revelation of the 




(282) 



THE MAX OF SIN. 



283 



Man of Sin and a great apostasy. It seems as if he were 
guarding them against the effect of his own previous letter, and 
he says something like this : i; In regard to the coming of the 
Lord Jesus, you must not be excited or disturbed by the be- 
lief that it is close at hand. You must not allow yourselves 
to be persuaded even by anything which I have said in my 
other letter. For, before Christ comes, there must first be 
a great apostasy, and then a revelation of the Man of Sin, 
who sets himself above everything that is divine, and opposes 
all religion, and would dethrone the Deity and take his place. 
This principle of evil, this secret principle of lawlessness, 
is already alive and active in the Church ; but there is a 
power which restrains it, so that it cannot become apparent. 
When this restraining power is removed, then the Man of Sin, 
the wicked one in the Church, shall be revealed. He shall 
appear, accompanied with all power and signs and false 
miracles, and shall exercise a very deceitful influence 
over all those who have not the love of truth strong within 
them." 

This passage in Thessalonians has always been regarded 
as a difficult one. It is one of the few passages in the Paul- 
ine letters in which we find an evident prediction of future 
events. There is another passage something like it, — 
1 Timothy iv. 1, — also prophetical. 

Dr. Arnold thinks this Man of Sin is the principle of a 
priesthood, when considered as the exclusive conveyers of 
spiritual privileges. But perhaps the chief theories concern- 
ing the Man of Sin. considered as a principle, maybe reduced 
to two. First, the Protestant theory, that it is the spirit of 
priestcraft and spiritual despotism in the Church, especially 
as manifested in the papacy. Second, the Roman Catholic 
theory that it is the spirit of infidelity, rebellion, and lawless 
individualism in the Church, especially as manifested in the 
Lutheran schism or reformation. In favor of the first, these 
points of the description are relied on : "He as God sitteth in 



284 



THE MAN OP SIN. 



the temple of God, professing to be God ; 99 " all power, and 
signs, and lying wonders," &c. In favor of the second the- 
ory these phrases are quoted : "It opposes itself to all that 
is called God," that is, " to all religion ; " " all that is wor- 
ship," that is, to the principle of reverence. 

By examining what is said more carefully, we shall see 
that the Man of Sin is a person, principle, or office, arising 
within the Church, and not outside of it. It was to be the 
development of something which already existed in Paul's 
time in an undeveloped state. It was to oppose all worship 
of divine beings, and seek to draw to itself all reverence. 
It is opposed to other religions no less than to Christian 
worship. It would appear to possess supernatural power, 
and claim to work miracles. It is a lawless spirit, the secret 
principle of lawlessness. Its victims are those who have lost 
the love of truth, and they are easily deceived, loving dark- 
ness better than light. It is hostile to the principle of rev- 
erence universally. The development of this evil is restrained 
by something else, — "Ye know what withholdeth ; " "He 
who now letteth (or hinders) will let till he be taken out 
of the way." 

There is something very striking about this prediction. 
The gift of prophetic insight which Paul possessed, flowing 
out of his spiritual life, enabled him to see deeply into the 
principles which were at work in the Church. Perfect in- 
sight was equivalent to foresight. He saw the future folded 
in the present, as a plant is contained in its germ. 

But what then is meant by the Man of Sin ? Is it priest- 
craft, or is it infidelity ? Or, since priestcraft is the mother 
of infidelity, and tyranny of rebellion, and since the child 
partakes of its mother's nature, may not the Man of Sin 
include both ? They are the two sides, the opposite manifes- 
tations of the same principle. This principle of self-will 
shows itself first in the Church in the form of spiritual 
assumption, and then outside of the Church in a spirit of 



THE MAN OF SIN. 



285 



rebelliou and irreverence, reacting against this assumption. 
And the restraining power which hindered its manifestation 
was doubtless the Roman state, which by persecuting the 
Church kept it humble. When this restraining power was 
removed, the principle of spiritual ambition would be de- 
veloped, which would be itself destroyed by the coming of 
Jesus : " Whom the Lord shall consume by the brightness 
of his coming." The history of Christianity has been in 
accordance with this prediction. After the Roman empire 
ceased to persecute the Church, the principle of spiritual 
ambition was immediately developed within it, until the 
priests claimed the right of ruling the world. Presently the 
papacy grasped at secular power, gave away kingdoms, and 
put its foot on the necks of princes. The Pope called him- 
self God, and claimed a kind of worship. The twin sister 
of this spiritual pride was infidelity. With the increase of 
outward power increased also inward unbelief. And so the 
prophecy was fulfilled in both of its forms. 

But the special and most important principle in this mat- 
ter is the fact that Paul speaks of the coming of the Man of 
Sin as something necessary before Christ could come. He 
thus shows that it is a law, that before we can reach the 
highest good the latent evil must be manifested. This prin- 
ciple applies to many other things as well. It is a law which 
runs through history and human life. The Man of Sin in 
the Human Heart, in Society, in the Church, or in the State, 
is first restrained, next revealed, and lastly, consumed. 

Paul says, You must not suppose that the millennium is at 
hand, or that Christ is coming to reign on earth this year or 
the next. Before that kingdom comes, and God's will is 
done on earth, there is evil to be brought out and conquered. 
There is hidden evil in the Church, which is now restrained, 
which is to be revealed, and then destroyed. This is the 
method by which evil is cured. 

The principle of the divine government here indicated is, 



286 



THE MAN OF SIN. 



that evil is first Restrained, then Revealed, then Consumed. 
This is the process by which God, in his providence, deals 
with evil. Let us notice some illustrations of it, in the soul, 
in the Church, in society, and in the state. 
I. In the Soul. 

The Man of Sin in the soul is first restrained, then re- 
vealed, then consumed. The coming of Christ in the heart 
is usually preceded by the revelation of sin. 

Our life begins with restraint, and freedom comes to us 
very gradually, as we are able to bear it. The child is sur- 
rounded with bounds and limits, and this is the best thing 
for him. 

We talk of happy childhood ; but what makes childhood 
happy? I think it is chiefly that all its law is outside of it. 
The restraint it complains of is its chief blessing. The free- 
dom it sighs for will bring its darkest gloom. There is no 
sense of sin in the child's heart. It does wrong things, and 
is sorry for them, but is not conscious of any wrong char- 
acter. It does not feel itself false, selfish, feeble, fickle, 
mean, cruel. All these evils, which make up the Man of 
Sin within us, are yet restrained in the child, and in the 
childish man, by outward barriers, checks, government. 
Its outward bondage is its inward freedom. Its law is all 
outside of it ; the iron of that law has not yet entered its 
soul. The child is like the bird in the air ; like the fish in 
the water ; like the Newfoundland dog, which runs or stops, 
sleeps or wakes, as it will. 

It is a great mistake which is often made, to try to give a 
young child a knowledge of sin. He ought not to have it, 
and cannot really have it. 

You make a young hypocrite of him, in trying to make of 
him a young saint. A child is meant to be a child : do not 
pull open with your fingers the folded bud of his conscious- 
ness ; wait till the suns and storms, the cloudy and bright 
days, unfold it voluntarily and easily. Guide, direct, instruct 



THE MAN OF SIN. 



287 



your child ; sympathize with him ; love him ; amuse him ; 
harden him by exposure ; toughen him by trial ; give him 
habits of industry, patience, tenacity ; but do not try to make 
of him a philosopher or a saint. The little saints in the 
Sunday school biographies are not natural ; they are pale 
and sickly : it is a morbid state. I do not mean that chil- 
dren should not be religious. It is natural for them to be 
religious. But their religion should be mostly that of grati- 
tude, trust, obedience, and love, not much that of self-exam- 
ination or confession of sin. 

The time comes, however, and comes soon enough, when 
the Man of Sin is revealed. Sooner or later we discover, 
beneath the wrong action, a wrong tendency. When the time 
comes, it is a good thing for the Man of Sin to be revealed. 
It gives us the knowledge of good and evil. It turns the 
child into the man. 

In every one of as there are tendencies to evil as well as 
tendencies to good. They often grow out of the same roots. 
One man is strong, self-relying, honest, truthful, but he is 
hard, unsympathizing, cold, stern. He repels affection, while 
he inspires respect. But he sees his good, he does not see 
his evil. He sees the Man of Goodness in him. not the Man 
of Sin. He shuts his eyes to all his bad tendencies ; he only 
knows his good tendencies. So he grows more and more 
hard and wilful. He intensifies his evil, never knowing that 
it is evil. TVhat does he need? He needs something to show 
him himself. He can see himself only in one of two ways 
— by carrying the light into his heart, or by having his heart 
come to the light. If he will not judge himself by the law 
of Christ, then he needs that he shall see himself in his own 
actions, by doing something that shall show him what he is. 
For example. I have known such a man as I described, 
who was a father, and had brought up his son carefully and 
strictly, and given him a good education, but finally, when the 
son had disappointed his expectations, told him that he could 



288 



THE MAN OF SIN. 



do no more for him, and that now he must shift for himself. 
So the son left his home, went to another country, and was 
heard of by his father as in utter want and misery, but too 
proud to go back to his home after what his father had told 
him. So the father had every day to see that his wife's heart 
was broken, thinking of her lost and wretched son ; had to 
look in the reproachful faces of his friends and children ; 
had to say to himself, " My hard and unrelenting will has 
ruined my child." The Man of Sin was revealed in him. 
What nothing else could show him of himself he saw in 
this outward consequence of his deed.. 

Years ago a lady came to me one day and said, " I am a 
sceptic. I do not believe in Christ. I believe in God, but 
not in the Bible. Yet I should like to be a Christian. Can 
you help me to become one ?" I heard her difficulties. She 
had been taught that to be a Christian one must believe in 
the literal inspiration of the Bible ; and because she could not 
believe in Joshua and the sun, and Jonah and the whale, she 
supposed she ought not to believe in Christ. After some 
months of study her difficulties were removed. She found 
she was a Christian. She joined the Church, and had her 
children baptized, one of whom, I am sorry to say, I did not 
prevent, by baptizing him, from becoming a rebel general. 
But one day her youngest child died. She was in despair. 
She rebelled against the will of God, and said she did not 
think God had any right to treat her so. I did not say to 
her, as Dr. Kirkland once did on a similar occasion, " Well, 
madam, what are you going to do about it?" for that an- 
swer, though witty enough, never seemed to me exactly to 
the point. All I did say, however, was apparently useless. 
But the next day this lady sent for me again. When I came 
in, I found her composed and tranquil. Then she said, " I see 
how it is. When I first tried to become a Christian, it was 
not from the love of truth, but from a secret fear that God 
would punish me for being an infidel. And as I loved my 



THE MAN OF SIN. 



289 



children more than anything else, I said, He will punish 
me by taking one of my children. So I thought that, if I 
became a Christian, he would leave me my children. I was, 
in fact, making a bargain with God. I thought I was sub- 
mitting to his will, but I was not. I see, now, that I was 
radically wrong all through, and nothing but the loss of my 
child would ever have shown to me the real state of my 
heart. Xow I see it all. My child has gone to God, and is 
happy ; and now, for the first time in my life, I am ready 
really to say, 4 Xot my will, but thine be done.' " 

Within a year or two this lady died in Xew Orleans, 
amid strangers — stern Presbyterians; but all of them de- 
clared, that though she was a Unitarian, they never saw a 
death so happy, and so full of the peace of God, as hers. 
All this happened thirty years ago. But three years since, 
sitting in a parlor of TTillard's Hotel, at Washington, a lady 
came to me across the room, and said, " Do you remember 
me?" She told me who she was, — the sister of this lady, 
— and then went on to say that to this hour those who were 
with 'her in New Orleans had not ceased to speak with won- 
der of the sweetness and strength and joy of her last hours. 

In childhood and youth we need to have the evil in us re- 
strained, but we never become fully grown men and women 
till it is revealed ; till we see our weakness as well as our 
strength ; till we understand that every height implies depth ; 
every capacity for going up carries the possibility of going 
down, all natural goodness is allied to natural evil. There 
are but two methods of this self-knowledge : one is by faith- 
fully applying the law of Christ to our lives and our hearts ; 
the other is of having our evil come out into action, and see- 
ing it so. These possibilities of evil are revealed either by 
carrying the truth into the evil, or by having the evil come 
to the truth, either by the light going into the darkness, or 
the darkness coming out to the light. 

II. So in the Chuech, the Man of Sin was first restrained, 
19 



290 



THE MAN OF SIN. 



then revealed, and then consumed — restrained by force, 
revealed by freedom, consumed by faith and love. 

All the interpretations given by commentators may, as 
we have seen, be reduced to two — Protestant and Catholic. 
Protestants consider the Man of Sin to be priestcraft in 
some of its forms. Catholics consider it to be infidelity in 
some of its forms. But infidelity is only the reaction from 
priestcraft. They are the two sides of the same thing. 
Priestcraft substitutes form for reality, a formal system of 
ritual and ceremony and dogma, in place of truth and life, 
and so provokes infidelity. 

When Paul wrote his first letter to the Thessalonians, he 
apparently thought that Christ was coming immediately. But 
when he w T rote his second letter, he had gone down much 
deeper ; and now he says, u Do not believe, no matter who 
tells you, even though I may have said it myself in my first 
letter, that the day of the Lord is at hand. Before it comes, 
the Mau of Sin must be revealed. It is to take the place of 
God, and call itself God. At present it is restrained ; but 
when that which restrains it is removed, it will be revealed ; 
and after it is revealed it will be consumed by the coming of 
Christ." All this has happened and is happening. Paul's 
prophetic insight saw the whole history of the Church as it 
then lay folded in the germ. He saw the principles at work 
then in the Church, and foresaw the results. For all fore- 
sight comes from sight, all prophecy of the future from 
insight into the present. 

The Church was then, like a child, surrounded with out- 
ward restraints, pressed down by the power of Rome, 
obliged to be very humble, very simple. The officers of the 
Church did not pretend to any authority over the brethren ; 
ritual and ceremony had not come ; there were no creeds, 
no dogmas ; no man thought his neighbor would go to hell 
for not believing as he did. 

But when the Church grew strong, and the restraining 



THE MAN OF SIN. 



291 



power was taken away ; when Christianity came of age, 
after three hundred years of childhood ; when it gained its 
freedom under Constantine, and became the religion of the 
State, — then the Alan of Sin was revealed. Then came for- 
malism, dogmatism, ritual. Then came pomp and authority in 
the priesthood. Then, instead of having God for their re- 
ligion, they took religion for their God. Then, instead of 
having Christ for their leader, they took the Church. Then 
came in all the host of holy men, holy days, holy books, 
holy works, fastings, prayers, sacraments, confession, celi- 
bacy of priests. And then came, as reaction, doubt, infi- 
delity, unbelief, till the very pope himself was an atheist, 
and the priests at the altar substituted low songs and drink- 
ing songs for their masses. Then came the Reformation, 
and the Coming of Christ to destroy, by the brightness of 
his truth and love, this Man of Sin. The Reformation has 
been going on inside of the Catholic Church as well as out- 
side of it. And on the other hand, the Protestant Church 
has not been wholly pure and free from the presence of these 
evils. But Christianity to-day, in all churches, is purifying 
itself from priestcraft, and therefore from infidelity. For 
the only way to cure infidelity, is to make the Church more 
pure, true, and loving. When Christians become all they 
ought to be, there will be no such thing left as infidelity. 

And now 1 might go on, and show you, if I had time, the 
working of this same law in society, and in the State. Evil 
is first restrained, then revealed, then consumed. When 
society is in its infancy, it is pure, manners are simple, 
habits of economy and industry prevail. Great contrasts of 
wealth and poverty do not exist. Men's desires are mod- 
erate ; excessive luxury is unknown. But the tendencies to 
these evils are all there, only restrained. But as wealth in- 
creases in a community, habits of luxury and extravagance 
increase too. The people cannot wait to grow rich by 
patient industry ; they must grow rich all at once. Then 



292 



THE MAN OF SIN. 



comes speculation instead of regular business, gambling in- 
stead of sober industry ; finally, all sorts of swindling, false- 
hood, knavery, appear. The Man of Sin is revealed. But 
the good result is to come out of it. A community which is 
poor is virtuous from necessity. When it first becomes pros- 
perous, it falls into extravagance and vice. But then it is to 
take the third step, and be wealthy without extravagance, — 
learning to use its wealth for good objects, making all of life 
better and happier, founding good institutions, cultivating taste, 
science, literature, art, — lifting up the whole community to 
a higher level. So the Man of Sin shall be finally consumed 
by the power of Christian truth and Christian love. 

One more example of this law I will give from its opera- 
tion in the State. The Man of Sin, in our national life, was 
Slavery — the oppression of one race by another. When 
the nation was in its infancy, this evil principle w T as re- 
strained by our national weakness and poverty. It did not 
show itself as the evil it really was. Slaves in Massachu- 
setts and Virginia, before the Revolution, we,re part of the 
family, and treated as such. But with the discovery of the 
cotton-gin, slaves became mere tools and instruments of money- 
making, and slavery then was revealed in all its deformity, 
in all its thousand woes and crimes, its barbarizing influences, 
its tyranny over whites as well as blacks, till it all culmi- 
nated in the rebellion. But, meantime, -Christianity had 
been building up a great antagonist power of truth and con- 
viction, which organized itself in a great party, and after a 
terrible struggle of thirty years, conquered and consumed 
Slavery down to its roots. Was not this really a coming of 
Christ in the power of his gospel, a coming of Christ in the 
coming of a new sense of justice and beauty in the mind of 
the nation? 

So Slavery, the Man of Sin in our national life, was first 
restrained, then revealed, then consumed. 

The working of this great law explains the slow progress 



THE MAN OF SIN. 



293 



of society. All evils in men must be brought out, and be 
seen, in order to be conquered. God intends men and na- 
tions to choose good freely, not to be driven into it. But to 
be chosen freely, it must be seen and understood, and so 
come frequent reactions, when the cure has been imperfect, 
and evil principles remain lingering in the depths of society. 
Thus, after the Commonwealth in England, came the resto- 
ration of Charles II., because there remained a worship of 
royalty in the nation's heart, which needed to be brought out 
and consumed. After the reign of Charles II. and James 
II., there remained no more of it, and the king of England 
since has been respected as the head of the State, but not 
as having any divine right to the throne. 

So it was necessary that Napoleonism in France should 
be brought out, and consumed ; and this has been done 
effectually by Napoleon III. After him, there will be no 
more worship of Napoleonic ideas. So, too, the papacy has 
lingered, until the last belief in the divine authority of 
priests and sacraments shall have come to the light, and be 
consumed and destroyed. 

Every evil, in order to be cured, must be brought to light, 
or have light brought to it. Light, Christian light, which is 
light and love together, is the only cure. The Man of Sin, 
therefore, must be revealed, whether he is in the Heart, in 
Society, in the Church, or in the State. There are two ways : 
one is that of self-scrutiny, self-knowledge, by carrying the 
light in, so producing genuine penitence, hatred of evil, love 
of good. This is one way. The other is to have the evil 
brought out, made manifest ; and this is what is meant by the 
judgment to come, or the judgment of the last day. Every 
evil has its day of judgment, its last day, some sooner, some 
later. There are many last days, many days of judgment. 
Slavery, for example, in this country, has had its last day, 
its day of judgment, and has forever come to an end. 

But, " if we judge ourselves," says the Scripture, 64 we 



294 



THE MAN OF SIN. 



shall not be judged." If a nation judges itself, it will not 
be judged. If this nation had put away its evil by voluntary 
emancipation, it would have escaped civil war. If a man 
looks iuto himself, and sees the evil in him, and repents and 
forsakes it, then he will not need to be judged by having this 
evil principle break out into some terrible crime or some low 
vice. The Man of Sin must be revealed ; but he need not 
be revealed by outward disaster, shame, disgrace, and ruin, 
if we are willing to obey the great command, in which the 
highest pagan wisdom concurs with the words of Christian 
faith — the great command, Know thyself. 



XXVI* 



MELCHIZEDEK AND HIS MORAL. 
Heb. v. 10 : " The order of Melchizedek." 

THE mysterious person called Melchizedek has been 
treated and maltreated by typologists to that extent 
that nearly all human meaning has gone out of him, and to 
most imaginations he appears as a mythical character, half 
theological and half supernatural. When a man gets to be 
regarded as a type, — that is, merely the shadow of some 
one else, cast backward, — his interest to, sensible persons 
must be very much diminished. Now, our poor friend Mel- 
chizedek has been triumphantly claimed by all type-loving 
writers as a type ; that is, an incarnated prophecy of Christ, 
sent two thousaud years before his coming, to signify what 
sort of a person he should be. Believing this, the whole 
man is only a fantastic apparition, and ceases to belong to 
history. 

But if we can show that Melchizedek was a real human 
being, belonging to his time and place, exactly such as are 
still to be found in that region, and that he was in no sense 
a type of Christ, or sent to foreshadow him, but that he and 
Christ were both types, or impressions, of one great law, 
and illustrations of one divine truth, then we think we shall 
have restored a little interest to this old Arab priest and 
king by relegating him to the ranks of our common hu- 

* Printed in the " Monthly Religious Magazine," July, 1867. 

(295) 



296 



MELCHIZEDEK AND HIS MORAL. 



manity. This, therefore, we propose to do in the present 
paper. 

The first mistake made about him, then, was to assume 
that u Melchizedek, King of Salem," gives us the name and 
residence of the man, whereas both are his official titles. 
His name we do not know : his office and title had swal- 
lowed it up. " King of Justice, and King of Peace," — this 
is his designation. His office, as we believe, was to be um- 
pire among the chiefs of neighboring tribes. By deciding 
the questions which arose among them, according to equity, 
he received his title of " King of Justice." By thus pre- 
venting the bloody arbitrament of war, he gained the other 
name, — " King of Peace." All questions, therefore, as to 
where " Salem" was, fall to the ground. Salem means 
u peace ; " it does not mean the place of his abode. 

But, in order to settle such disputes, two things were 
necessary, — first, that the surrounding Bedouin chiefs 
should agree to take him as their arbiter ; and, secondly, 
that some sacredness should attach to his character, and 
give authority to his decisions. Like others in those days, 
he was both king and priest ; * but he was priest " of the 
Most High God," — not of the local gods of the separate 
tribes, but of the God whom their gods worshipped. That 
he was the acknowledged arbiter of surrounding tribes, ap- 
pears from the fact that Abraham paid to him tithes out of 
the spoils. It is not likely that Abraham did this if there 
were no precedent for it ; for he regarded the spoils as be- 
longing, not to himself, but to the confederates in whose 
cause he fought. No doubt it was the custom, as in the 
case of Delphos, to pay tithes to this supreme arbiter ; and, 
in doing so, Abraham was simply following the custom. 

All this is so natural and probable, that the wonder is that 



* See, for example, iEneid, ix, 327 : — 

"Rex idem, et regi Turno gratissiinus augur." 



MELCHIZEDEK AND HIS MORAL. 



297 



it should not have been noticed before. Yet, so far as we 
know, the Bible Dictionaries and Commentaries have told 
us nothing of this sort. It is not suggested by Smith nor 
by Robinson in their Bible Dictionaries, in their articles on 
the subject, nor by Stanley in his " History of the Jewish 
Church." As far as I know, it is my own hypothesis ; but 
that which was only a probable hypothesis became to me 
almost a certainty, when I found, in the Jewish traveller 
Wolff, a statement that, in Mesopotamia, a similar custom 
prevails at the present time. One Sheik is selected from 
the rest, on account of his superior probity and piety, and 
becomes their " King of Peace and Righteousness." A 
similar custom, I am told, prevails among some Ameri- 
can tribes. Indeed, where society is organized by clans, 
subject to local chiefs, some such arrangement seems neces- 
sary to prevent perpetual feuds. 

This personage, whose office I have stated, appears three 
times in the Bible, — once, historically, in the Book of Gen- 
esis ; once, poetically, by allusion in the Psalms ; and once, 
logically, in the Epistle to the Hebrews. 

He appears, historically, for a moment, in the story of 
Abraham, blessing him after battle. It would be a very 
strange thing for him to do, unless he had some such official 
position as I have suggested. He comes from no one knows 
where, goes no one knows whither, his residence not men- 
tioned, his name not known, his descent not described nor 
recorded. The reference to him in the Book of Psalms and 
in the Epistle to the Hebrews I will consider hereafter ; but 
now I shall try to accomplish my purpose of giving some 
color and vitality to our friend, who figures, even in Stanley, 
as a semi-spectral character, wrapped round, as he says, " in 
that mysterious obscurity which has rendered his name the 
symbol of all such sudden, abrupt apparitions, the interrup- 
tions, the dislocations, if one may so say, of the ordinary even 
succession of cause and effect." Let us, then, read again 
the story of Abraham and Melchizedek. 



298 



MELCHIZEDEK AND HIS MORAL. 



Not far from the great range of Mt. Caucasus, which rises 
like an enormous wall, running from the Caspian to the 
Black Sea. lie the head waters of the Euphrates and Tigris. 
There, four thousand years ago, lived a Bedouin Sheik, 
among the Chaldees. whom men called, for his piety. The 
Friend of God. or. sometimes more reverentially, The 
Frlend. Among those Arab tribes manners do not change. 
"VVe know just how he lived then, — how he rested at noon 
in his black tent, with his chief's cloak of brilliant scarlet, a 
loose handkerchief bound round his head with a fillet of rope, 
and a spear in his hand to guide the march by day and fix 
the place of the camp at evening. His wife, the princess of 
the tribe, is there in her own tent, making the cakes, getting 
ready the meal of milk and butter ; the slave is there to 
bring the soup of lentils for the hunter. The great telescope 
at Cambridge brings the moon to within a hundred miles of 
us ; but the telescope of history, as we look through it, 
brings up that little picture of the " Friend of God" from 
four thousand years away, and we see him face to face. 

This good man lived among idolaters. He could not wor- 
ship their gods. He used to look at the great heavens at 
night, studded with unnumbered stars, and saw that there 
was one great Supreme Being, who made, as Xapoleon said, 
" all that." It was borne into his mind that he must go 
away and find a place where he could live far from idols, 
and bring up his children to worship one great God — the 
God of the heavens and earth. And then the vision dawned 
to him of a nation of which he should be the father, all 
worshipping the one great God. At last the voice in his 
soul spoke so strongly that he must obey. He told the ser- 
vants to load the camels, and he left his home, his old neigh- 
bors, the familiar sight of the snowy mountain range, the 
blue waters of the lonely mountain lake, and moved away. 

The same thing happens every year in each of our New 
England villages. Young men, and men of middle age, are 



MELCHIZEDEK AND HIS MORAL. 299 

moved to go out West, and found a new home ; and they go. 
Sometimes, doubtless, it is the voice of mere ambition ; but 
often it is a secret instinct, telling them that their work in the 
world is not merely to carry on the old routine, but to go to 
some larger, freer place, and there find out what they can do 
for God and man. So they believe the inner instinct, and 
go. So Abraham believed it, and went. 

Two things he believed, — and he clung to his belief all 
his life, — something not seen ; he had no outward evidence 
of it, only the deep conviction of his soul, — one, that the 
land of Palestine should belong to his family and descendants 
forever ; the other, that his family should be like the stars 
of heaven in number, and that he should be the Father of 
the Faithful. In that conviction he lived, and in that con- 
viction he died. When he died, he had little more to show 
for it than at first. All the land he owned in Palestine 
when he died was just a little piece of ground which he had 
bought for Sarah's tomb to stand on. All the great family 
he believed to be coming was comprised in one son, the child 
of his old age. He lived by faith, he died in faith ; his faith 
was " the substance of things hoped for," and " the evidence 
of things not seen." The only evidence he had of his great 
hope was that he could not help believing it. But if he had 
not believed it, and believed it so firmly, it never would have 
come. If he had thought it wise, as men do now, to believe 
only in positive knowledge, and trust only the evidence, of 
his five senses, he would have lived and died an Arab Sheik 
in Mesopotamia, and never been heard of after. He would 
not have been the " Friend of God," nor the " Father of the 
Faithful" through all time. 

In the spring of the year, if you wish to put a post into 
the ground, you take a pickaxe and a crow-bar, and strike 
the flinty sod, and make a hole for it. To put that dead 
stake into the ground, you must take an iron crow-bar. But 
when God wishes to cause some living thing to grow up out 



300 



MELCHIZEDEK AND HIS MORAL. 



of the ground towards heaven, he makes the little seed send 
up a little folded stalk, so tender that you would say it could 
not get through a bit of mould ; but somehow it pushes its 
way up. the little tender thing, and at last, after many years, 
it becomes a monarch tree, covering half an acre with its 
mighty shadow. So differently in this world do human wis- 
dom on one side, divine faith on the other, accomplish their 
work. 

When Abraham had been some time in Palestine, news 
came to him that his cousin Lot had been robbed, and his 
family carried off, by a body of robber-tribes, who had made 
a raid into the rich valley of the Jordan, and plundered the 
city of Sodom. Abraham, generous and loyal heart, would 
not forsake his friend, the rich merchant of Sodom, but 
armed his servants, pursued the plunderers, and when they 
were expecting no such danger, fell on them suddenly iu the 
gray dawn, attacking their camp on two sides at once, and 
took back Lot, and all the captives and plunder. But now 
comes the incident in which we are chiefly interested. 

The wild tribes of the desert, knowing no law but their 
own will, are yet forced, as we have said, by the absolute 
necessities of human life, to organize justice in some loose 
form. Then and now. they adopted and adopt the custom 
of selecting some arbiter of their disputes. They chose a 
man for his justice and piety, finding one who was true to 
God and to his neighbor. Him they called their Melchi-Zedek 
and Melchi-Salem, — their "King of Justice and Peace," 
— and made him their judge of international law. To show 
his approval of Abraham's course in this matter, he gave 
bread and wine to the party, and pronounced a blessing on 
the whole proceeding " in the name of the Most High God. 
Possessor of heaven and earth." And Abraham, in cor- 
responding token of a recognition of his position, gave him 
tithes of the spoils. 

Thus far all is human and natural in the transaction. 



MELCHIZEDEK AND HIS MORAL. 



301 



The question now comes of the references to the event in the 
Psalms and in Hebrews. 

The one hundred and tenth Psalm would, no doubt, be sup- 
posed to refer to David, were not the Messianic character 
ascribed to it, apparently, by Christ himself (Matt. xxii. 41, 
and the parallels). The whole Psalm seems a triumphant as- 
cription to David of great victories and conquests. Neander, 
however, says that, if Jesus named David as its author, we 
are not shut up to the alternative of detracting from his in- 
fallibility, or admitting that David really wrote it, since the 
question of authorship was immaterial to his purpose, 

The Psalm ascribes the power of royal conquest to the 
help of Jehovah. The king's sceptre reaches out of Zion, 
the holy habitation of God. His enemies are subject, his 
people submissive. The dew of youth returns to him. He 
has become priest and king at once. He sits on the right 
hand of God ; for Zion holds both royal palace and the holy 
tabernacle. Jehovah smites before him the hostile ' kings. 
He marches on his w r ay, drinking of the brooks freely in the 
land of his foes, and filling their valleys with the slain. 

But here, in this Psalm, first occurs the phrase of which 
the writer to the Hebrews afterwards made such good use. 
David, or the son of David, is a priest, not after the order 
of Aaron, but after that of Melchizedek. He could not be a 
priest genealogically ; for he was descended from Judah, not 
from Levi. But he could be a priest spiritually, just as Mel- 
chizedek was a true priest, though without any genealogy, — 
descended from no one, having neither father nor mother, 
having no pedigree, his birth not mentioned, his death not 
mentioned, — without beginning of days or end of life. 

Thus it appears that even as far back as the times of 
David the prophetic spirit which inspired this Psalm taught 
that there were two kinds of priests, — the priests by tradi- 
tion and the priests by inspiration. These two kinds have 
always continued, and exist to-day, both of them useful, but 



S02 



MELCHIZEDEK AND HIS MORAL. 



the inspired priesthood alone being the Christian priesthood, 
the other only a pale reminiscence of Judaism. 
Look, first, at — 

I. The Priesthood of Tradition, or of Aaron. 

This appears in history in the three forms of — 1. A 
Genealogical Priesthood ; 2. A Corporate Priesthood ; 3. A 
Clergy. 

1. The priesthood of Aaron was transmitted by genera- 
tion. To be a priest, one must be born of a priest, just as to 
be a British nobleman one must be born of a nobleman. It 
was, therefore, necessary to keep accurate genealogical tables, 
so as to be sure that the tradition of hereditary qualities by 
birth might be secured. 

This is the most absolute form of the priesthood of tradi- 
tion, and it is probably based on the observed fact that there 
are hereditary qualities, which are transmissible in families. 
The superiority of certain races, in man and animals, has long 
been observed. Hence, even to this day, the wool-growers 
of Syria pack with their bales of wool a copy of the pedigree 
of the flock from which it came, and the Arabs religiously 
preserve the pedigree of their horses. The sons of a good 
man are more likely, other things being equal, to be good 
men. This genealogical priesthood has even appeared in 
Puritan New England, and certain families, like the Abbots, 
Aliens, Beechers, Stearnses, Peabodys, seem to constitute 
almost an hereditary priesthood. 

2. The Corporate Priesthood does not claim to transmit 
qualities by birth, but only by admission into a close corpora- 
tion. This is the claim of the Roman Catholic priesthood, 
the High Church of England, and some Oriental bodies, as 
the Greek Church, Copts, and Armenians. One becomes a 
priest by being in the corporate line of transmissible qualities. 
These are not transmitted by generation, but by ceremonial 
contact. The thing to ascertain about a man, to see if he 
be really a priest, is this : Has he been properly admitted 
iuto the corporation by the usual ceremonies? 



MELCHIZEDEK AND HIS MORAL. 



303 



Now, there is a certain foundation even for this view. 
Every corporate body lias its own spirit, into which all its 
members are more or less baptized. By association, by in- 
tercourse, by belonging to the brotherhood, some spiritual 
qualities are communicated and received. Thus, in the 
Methodist body, there is a certain tone of Methodism ; in 
the Unitarian body, a Unitarian tone, and so on. 

3. A Clergy. As long as the distinction between clergy 
and laity exists, so long there remains something of the 
priesthood of Aaron, or tradition, though only in its lowest 
form. 

Here, in New England, the clergy has from the earliest 
times been distinguished from the laity by certain palpable 
signs, transmitted by fashion and example from age to age. 
Some sobrieties of dress, of tone, of manner, indicate the 
minister. Even his pronunciation, in some denominations, 
seems affected by his ecclesiastical character. Thus, we 
observe that there is a ministerial way of pronouncing the 
adjective " great," as though it were written " gra-a-aie." 
And so, also, it is thought clerical to say " Sabbath " instead 
of Sunday ; or to remark, " We have been favored with fine 
weather lately," instead of the more secular statement, " Nice 
time for the crops." 

Now, there may be some advantages about this transmitted 
fashion of clerical behavior. The clerical neckcloth has dis- 
appeared. No minister now walks through the streets of 
Boston on Sunday with his black gown floating to the breeze. 
Yet it may be well for ministers to have a deportment some- 
what toned down by the serious work of their lives ; and we 
cannot admire the efforts made by some of the clergy to 
escape the least suspicion of the manners of their order. 

II. The Priesthood of Melchizedek, or Inspira- 
tion. 

However valuable may be the priesthood of transmission, 
it is certain that Jesus had none of it. He came eating and 



304 



MELCHIZEDEK AND HIS MORAL. 



drinking, talking, working, dining with Pharisees and Pub- 
licans, making himself the friend of Samaritans and sinners, 
making wine for the marriage, and violating all Levitical laws 
concerning the Sabbath, ablutions, and distinctions of meats. 
His priesthood was plainly meant to be wholly different from 
that of Aaron. It lay not at all in conformity to any habits 
or usages. It was original throughout. 

This entire separation of Jesus from all the old ways has 
never been adequately recognized. It is one of the most 
amazing facts in all history, — this radicalism, so thorough, 
and yet so quiet. It ran below the roots of all institutions, 
and yet never sounded a trumpet before it, proclaiming, 
" See, all men, what a Radical I am ! 99 

The world is carried on by these two great forces, — In- 
spiration and Method. Inspiration makes all things new. 
Method gathers up, arranges, and saves every old thing of 
any value. We need them both. Inspiration finds the way, 
method builds a road on it when found. One is soul ; the 
other, body. Body without soul is only a corpse ; soul with- 
out body is nothing but a ghost. But method is apt to get 
very hard and rigid after a while, and so has to be broken 
up. Method is excellent wdien it is a track, bad when it 
becomes a rut. It is a good thing, in crossing one of the 
great Western prairies, where there is neither road, fence, 
farm, nor house, but one great rolling ocean of green and 
flowers, — it is a good thing to have a track to follow, and 
not be obliged to steer, as men often do, by the compass. 
But when this track, going through wet places, has become 
deep ruts, then we leave it, make a circuit, and drive out into 
the open prairie for a while, and make a new track for our- 
selves. So, from time to time, when method grows too 
rigid, and order becomes a stiff routine ; when religion, 
education, or politics fall into ruts, we must go back to 
inspiration, and make a new pathway through the unknown 
towards truth and good. 



MELCHIZEDEK AND HIS MORAL. 



305 



Some very good methods had been established in the Jew- 
ish Church. The great institution of the priesthood was 
such a method. For one thing, it put a stop to polytheism, 
idolatry, and the worship of a multitude of local gods, by 
having one great central worship at Jerusalem, so grand and 
imposing that it made Jehovah supreme in every Jewish 
mind. It made an order of priests whose interests, whose 
convictions, whose habits, whose prejudices, led them to sup- 
port monotheism in the whole nation. Ritualism was never 
carried so far, unless it be that Egyptian worship surpassed 
it in solemn and awful grandeur. But who that saw the 
great festivals, the grandeur of the temple worship, the 
cloisters and porches, — a single one of which, the Royal 
Porch, with its roofs borne up by an hundred and sixty-two 
Corinthian columns, covered an area larger than that of York 
Minster, — the magnificent gates covered with bronze and 
gold, the twenty thousand priests serving in their order in 
the Temple, with their gorgeous robes, — who that saw all 
this, humble peasant though he might be from some Galilean 
hill, but went home rejoicing that this great worship of Jeho- 
vah was also his, and that he, also, was a child of Abraham, 
Father of the Faithful and Friend of God. 

But now, in the time of Jesus, the track had turned into a 
rut, and order had stiffened into hard routine. Method had 
lost its life, and the beautiful warm human body had become 
a cold corpse, still beautiful perhaps, but dead. 

" So calmly sweet, so softly fair, — 
Yv"e start ; for soul is wanting there ! " 

And so Jesus became the new and great High Priest, and 
the head of a new priesthood, which consisted, not of those 
descended from Aaron, but of those who have faith in God. 
All Christians became kings and priests unto God, and the 
magnificent Order of the Temple and the long descent from 
Aaron came to an end. 
20 



306 



MELCHTZEDEK AND HIS MORAL. 



No wonder that the Hebrew Christians could not quite 
make up their minds to this. They missed, in the pure sim- 
plicity of their new worship, the grand ceremonies of the old 
ritual. Christianity seemed bare and cold to them. Just 
so, to Catholics, Protestantism seems bare and cold ; just 
so, to Orthodoxy, Liberal Christianity seems cold. It is 
always sad to see the end of a long line, whether of priests 
or nobles. Lord Chief Justice Crewe, in the time of Charles 
the First, in pronouncing judgment in the claim to the extinct 
title of the great house of De Yere, almost turned a poet, 
and said, that " his affection so stood to the continuance of 
that noble name, that he would take hold of a twig or twine 
thread to uphold it ; but yet," adds he, " there must be a 
period and end of whatever is terrene, — an end of names 
and dignities, and why not of De Yere? For where is 
Bohun? Where is Mowbray? Where is Mortimer? Nay, 
what is more and most of all, where is Plantagenet ? They 
are all entombed in the urns and sepulchres of mortality." 

So it happened that the Hebrew Christians, looking back- 
ward, longed for the fleshpots of their old ritual, and began 
to backslide. They said, " We want a priesthood. How can 
Christ be a priest, when he is not of the house of Aaron or 
tribe of Levi, but of the tribe of Judah? He is out of the 
true line of succession. He is out of the true order of the 
ministry. He is not a priest in the God-established method. 
He may be a great prophet, but he is no true priest ; there- 
fore he is not authorized to sacrifice, or to give us the true 
worship. For religion has not only a soul, but also a body ; 
and the true body is as important as the true soul. Only the 
Jewish priest is in the line of the true succession. So, if we 
wish to worship so as to please God, we must go back and 
be Jews again." 

Now this is the identical argument which Catholics use 
against Protestants, and which Episcopalians use against 
other Protestant denominations. They say that the body of 



MELCHIZEDEK AND HIS MORAL. 



307 



religion is as important as the soul ; our Church is the only- 
true body, and so, out of it, there are no authorized means 
of grace, no authentic priesthood or ministry, no divinely 
established worship. And by these arguments, hundreds, 
every year, are led into the Catholic Church or into the 
Episcopalian Church. 

But what was the answer of the apostle to this argument? 
He went straight back to the old King-Priest who met Abra- 
ham, and to whom Abraham paid tithes, — the man we call 
Melchizedek, King of Righteousness and King of Peace. 
u Look at him ! " said he. " From whom was he descend- 
ed? Where is his genealogy? How did he get into any 
authorized succession? He did not come from Levi or 
Aaron, but the father of Levi and Aaron paid him tithes ; 
he had no father nor mother, beginning of days nor end of 
life, no genealogy, no regular descent. He came from no 
one knows whence ; he went no one knows where. How, 
then, was he a true priest? Because he worshipped the true 
God. He was made a priest, not after the law of a carnal 
commandment, but after the power of an endless life. And 
Jesus is a priest in that same divine order, — a priest forever 
after the order of Melchizedek." 

This Melchizedek, then, is another kind of priest, different 
from the tribe of Levi ; not a priest because of being in the 
formal succession, but by being the true man ; not by being 
in the right place, but by having the right thing in him. His 
priesthood was not a matter of etiquette, regulation, consti- 
tution, or code ; it came from the noble religious soul in him, 
which saw a Supreme God amid the idolatries which sur- 
rounded him. He was made priest by the power of an end- 
less life. Eternity dwelt in his soul. He stood in contact 
with two worlds ; he saw the infinite realities of past and 
future roll together in the great present. He saw substance 
below the form, spirit within the letter, life pervading mat- 
ter, God moving in the world. This made him a priest, a 



308 



MELCHIZEDEK AND HIS MORAL. 



true priest, a priest forever; for, tea centuries after, the pro- 
phetic, poetic spirit of David saw iu him the analogies 
of the future Teacher of mankind — priest of the whole 
race of men. As this King of Justice aud Peace mediated 
between many tribes and made them as one, so should the 
future priest mediate among all mankind. As he was a 
priest because he stood near to God, not because of any out- 
ward descent, family, or genealogy, so should it be with the 
coming Child of God, who was to purify the hearts of many- 
languaged men. And as Melchizedek was a priest forever, 
because his spiritual qualities were never to be forgotten, so 
the same qualities in Christ, but of a more divine order, 
should uplift the souls of men through all time. 

This analogy, seen by David, was caught up in the argu- 
ment of the writer to the Hebrews. This is his answer to 
their otherwise fatal objection. He goes back of the objec- 
tion, moving a previous question. u Yes," he says, " I 
admit freely that Jesus was no priest of that kind, — no 
priest like your priests, — but he was of a far higher and 
nobler kind. He did a true priest's work far more nobly 
and truly than they can do it." 

The true priest is not the man who wears the cassock, or 
gown, or surplice ; not the one who has Reverend before his 
name in the city directory ; not the professional priest, mem- 
ber of a craft, known by his looks, tones, manners, educa- 
tion. This is the priest after the order of Aaron. His 
priesthood consists in regularity : in standing in the regular 
place, saying the regular words, wearing the regular cos- 
tume, using the regular tone, having the regular manner. 
His priesthood is all surface priesthood. He is known by 
his cloth, as it is said ; by the kind of coat he wears. 

But the real priest is the man who has the power of an 
endless life in his soul, by which he can bring us nearer to 
God. We bless him who can make us see God. We are 
often away from God ; we have lost sight of him ; it seems 



MELCHIZEDEK AND HIS MORAL. 



309 



as if be had forgotten us. Who shall show us the way back 
to our Father? Whoever does this for us is our real priest 
after the power of a spiritual life. 

There are times when forms and rules are good, and the 
priest after the order of Levi is needed. I do not mean to 
say that order in the ministry is not often expedient. But I 
wish to say that our great High Priest transcended these 
limits, and took his position on a far deeper and more uni- 
versal priesthood than that of form, ritual, or succession. It 
would have been very easy for God to have caused Jesus to 
be born from the tribe of Levi ; but Divine Providence chose 
otherwise, to teach us that the true priest stands on a much 
more profound basis of reality than any church can give, de- 
rives his ordination from a far holier source, is in the apos- 
tolic succession, not of any limited church, but of all true 
teachers of the race since the world began. It seems 
strange, therefore, that in any church men should prefer the 
ordination of Aaron and Levi to that of Melchizedek and 
Christ ; prefer legitimating a priest by studying out his 
genealogy, and proving that he stands in the right order of 
descent, to legitimating him by finding him like Melchizedek, 
" without father or mother, without beginning of days or 
end of life ; made like to the Son of God, not after the law 
of carnal commandments, but after the power of an endless 
life." 

Every Christian, therefore, is a priest ; every one who has 
faith in God as his Father and Friend can communicate that 
faith to others. The priesthood of Jesus is not in any regu- 
larity of appointment, not in his having the right title-deeds, 
signed and sealed in the right way. But he is the great 
High Priest of the human race forever, because he was so 
full of the sense of God's presence and love that he has 
spoken to the heart of the human race, and lifted it all 
nearer to the Father. So he may say in truth, " No man 
cometh to the Father but by me." Who ever came in any 



310 



MELCHIZEDEK AND HIS MORAL. 



other way? Before Christ, men went to Jehovah, the God 
of Justice; to Jupiter, the God of Power; to Brahro, the 
Abstract Spirit ; Boodh, the representative of the human 
soul struggling against the laws of Nature. They went to 
Science, and found, not God the Father, but only God as 
Infinite Law ; they went to Philosophy, and found God as 
Reason, and Cause of all things ; but never, never did they 
find their Father except through Jesus, and so he became, by 
that revelation, the High Priest of the human race forever. 

And so every humble soul that sees the Father, and lives 
in that sweet vision, becomes a priest to other souls. A 
sacramental power goes from the voice, the touch, the look, 
of every one who is himself loving God. The Catholic 
defines sacrament as conveying grace, no less than as a sym- 
bol of it. To most Protestants sacraments are merely 
symbols and suggestions. But there are sacraments which 
convey grace. I call it a sacramental occasion when any 
soul, full of the love of God and man, strives to help another 
soul ; to purify, to elevate, to bring it to God. Something 
beyond the meaning of the words passes from heart to heart ; 
something more convincing than argument, more weighty 
than reason, makes of that hour a sacramental hour, and of 
that office a priesthood. The life of God flows to us through 
these channels. Deeper than all depth, higher than all 
height, the Spirit comes through these human hearts to ours. 

How often has the patient, waiting love of a wife made 
her thought and care a priesthood to her husband, saving 
him from the perils of his stormy life, and bringing him at 
last to know and love God, and to taste the sweetness of 
heaven below ! When the children see their parents living 
lives of purity, devotion, fidelity, truth, justice, honor, ten- 
derness, what priesthood can so lift their young hearts to 
God as this? Therefore, the father was of old the priest; 
and the king, as head of the tribe, was also its priest, — 
traces of which customs linger through all historic records. 



MELCHIZEDEK AND HIS MORAL. 



311 



And if parents may be priests to their children, so also 
may children be priests to their parents, opening to them the 
gateway of heaven. These little, tender, innocent, depend- 
ent, helpless, trusting hearts draw out all that is best in 
ours, and make us more simple, true, and pure. Little 
children in a family are God's priesthood there, after the 
order of Melchizedek, to sweeten all life with something 
from on high. " Trailing clouds of glory do they come, 
from heaven, which is their home." And when they go 
away, when their tender forms are laid below the green 
grass, we go and sit by their graves under the clear October 
sky, and hear the dry leaves dropping on the dry sod ; 'and 
then they lift our hearts above our common hardness and 
coldness, and make us feel that there is something in us bet- 
ter than the love of money, better than the love of fame or 
power ; that we, too, belong to their heaven, and shall see 
our angels again once more in the presence of God and the 
great High Priest of Love, Jesus Christ. 

The poet used also to be called a priest ; and the true 
poet is a priest after the order of Melchizedek ; for he shows 
us God in the world. He teaches us to see a divine beauty 
in all of Nature. Nature is not merely a house and farm 
for us to live in, not merely a picture-gallery for us to amuse 
ourselves in, not merely a museum of curiosities for us to 
study ; but the poet shows us, if he be a true, divinely-in- 
spired poet, he shows us our Father in it all. Nature is full 
of the peace of God then. In the dawn of morning, he 
shows ns the smile of God welcoming his children to their 
daily work ; in the gorgeous sunset, God drawing the cur- 
tains of the evening ; in the solemn fires of night, circling 
along their interminable paths forever, the majestic sta- 
bility of God's great order ; in all the infinite varieties 
of plant, flower, tree, insect, bird, he shows the Divine 
Providence caring for all his creatures, painting the lily 
of the field, and marking the fall of the sparrow. And 



312 



MELCHIZEDEK AND HIS MORAL. 



so the poet, or the lover of Nature, becomes also a priest, and 
his every verse is a hymn and sacramental psalm. Such a 
priest was Wordsworth, sanctifying all the thoughts of men 
where the English language is spoken ; such a priest is 
Whittier, filling all of Nature and life with a sense of God's 
presence. These are the priests forever, after the order of 
Melchizedek. 

So we may find our true priests everywhere, and we may 
ourselves all be true priests of God. If we have in us the 
spirit of Christ ; if we see God as our Father, and as the 
Father of all men ; if, in this spirit, we learn to respect and 
honor all God's children ; if we carry in our hearts, 
wherever we go, an unfailing trust that God is all around 
us in Nature, that God is always going before us by his 
Providence, and that he is always ready to come into our 
hearts by the holy influence of his Spirit ; we shall find a 
priesthood in all Nature, in all events, in all life, and we 
shall carry that holy and sanctifying influence to others. In 
religion, before all other things, come spirit and truth. The 
true creed is not that which our fathers signed, but that to 
which our own minds assent. The only liturgy worth keep- 
ing is that by which we can worship God in spirit and in 
truth. The only priest who can help us to approach God is 
the man or woman or child who has a living faith in God, 
and speaks out of that. We want and need order, but not 
so much the order of Aaron as that of Melchizedek ; the 
order which establishes justice and maintains peace ; the 
order of childlike hearts, of those who become as little 
children to see God ; the order of sincere infancy, of honest 
goodness, of the love which is in daily life, of the generous 
* heart which forgets its own good in the good of others, of 
the truth which is loyal to the end amid all mistakes, all 
censure, all failure. This is the divine order which the 
Lord Jesus has brought to us from his Father and ours. 
This is the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven 



MELCHIZEDEK AND HIS MORAL. 



313 



to man ; this is the only priesthood which lasts forever. 
The priesthood of Aaron passes away ; the priesthood of the 
soul endures always. 

" The Old Jerusalem was built apart, 

And in it men sought God in cloubt and fear; 
The New Jerusalem is in our heart, 

And cometh clown from God to make heaven here." 



XXVIL 



NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE RELIGION. 
Matt. xii. 44: "When he cometh, he findeth it empty." 

WHY did the evil spirit, which had been cast out of 
the man, return again so easily? Because the house 
he occupied had been left empty after his departure. It was 
swept and garnished ; that is, made clean and adorned ; but 
it was empty. That made it easy for him to go in again. 
Had it been occupied, he could not have returned. 

The doctrine of the parable, therefore, is, that no merely 
negative reform, negative goodness, negative religion, is 
enough ; these will never secure a soul against relapse. We 
want something positive ; positive reforms, goodness, reli- 
gion. Safety or salvation is to be found only in this positive 
religion. 

This doctrine accords with the experience of all men, and 
with the observation of all ages. Dr. Watts expresses it, 
when he says that " Satan finds some mischief still, for idle 
hands to do." John Newton expressed it, by saying, u If I 
wish to keep my basket from being filled with chaff, the best 
way is to fill it brim full with wheat." 

The human soul, like Nature, abhors a vacuum. It must 
be filled and occupied with something. If it cannot have 
good thoughts and great truths to contemplate, it will be 
occupied with trivial ones ; if it has no noble love, it will be 
drawn aside by some meaner passion ; if it has no important, 

(314) 



NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE RELIGION. 



315 



generous, useful work to do, it will devote itself to some in- 
significant pursuit. The soul must be occupied by some 
good spirit, or a bad one will occupy it. 

That which sweeps the house is Morality ; that which gar- 
nishes or adorns the house is Culture ; but neither of them 
occupy it. A soul may be morally innocent and clean ; it 
may be highly cultivated and accomplished ; and yet may be 
devoted to nothing ; — without any serious purpose, with no 
object in life, not living for anything. 

Xow, the only good spirit which can occupy the soul fully, is 
Religion. And by religion, I mean, in the largest sense, devo- 
tion to a good outside of ourselves ; unselfish consecration of 
mind, heart, and hand to a great and good cause ; generous, 
self- forgetful service of Justice, Freedom, Humanity, and 
God. 

Neither Morality nor Culture can occupy the soul of man. 
Only a religion can occupy it, which consists not of dogmas, 
not of ceremonies, not of transient emotions, but of Love. 
The religion of love alone is positive, solid, substantial ; that 
alone can fill the soul full. 

But the soul is like a house, composed of many different 
apartments. There is the chamber of the Understanding, or 
Knowing faculty ; that of the Conscience, or Moral faculty ; 
that of the Imagination, or Picturesque faculty ; that of 
Amusement ; that of Work ; and that of Worship. None 
of these apartments must be left empty, and nothing can 
occupy them but the angel of love. 

There is a good angel, whom God intends to inhabit each 
of them ; if he does not come, then no matter how clean 
the apartment is, or how finely furnished, a bad angel will 
certainly come in his place. This doctrine I will now en- 
deavor to explain and illustrate. 

I. Consider what will occupy the Understanding. 

The Understanding is one of the apartments in that house 
which we call the Human Soul. It needs a positive educa- 



316 



NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE RELIGION. 



tion ; needs positive knowledge. That is the good angel 
which belongs there. 

People sometimes object to teaching children religious 
principles and ideas, on the ground that they do not wish to 
prejudice the minds of the children in favor of one system 
of doctrine, but to leave their minds free, so that they may 
be unbiased, and choose for themselves by and by. 

It is reported of Coleridge, that he was one day talking 
with a man, who said that he did not intend to teach any posi- 
tive religious truth to his children, as he would not prejudice 
them in favor of any particular opinions, but let them choose 
for themselves when they grew up. "Come and see my 
garden," said Coleridge. So he took him to a piece of 
ground, all overgrown with weeds. " How is this? Do 
you call this your garden?" said the other. u Yes," re- 
plied Coleridge, " that is my garden. I did not plant any- 
thing in it, for I would not prejudice it in favor of straw- 
berries and roses, and somehow it has taken a fancy for 
nettles and pigweed." 

The human intellect is such a garden. You cannot keep 
it empty. Give it good thoughts, or it will have bad ones ; 
wise thoughts, or it will have foolish ones. 

But a great deal of teaching has a negative character to 
it, or at least, a superficial character. It is the garnishing 
of the apartment ; its ornament, its plaster, and paint. It 
does not occupy the understanding. Only live knowledge 
occupies the intellect. It must be knowledge which interests 
the intellect, else it wastes away, is forgotten, and lost. 
The understanding is empty which is only filled with the 
rubbish of dead knowledge. But anything which we love, 
which we pursue with vital interest, any study which carries 
us on of itself, becomes the angel of knowledge in a soul. 

Hence we say that the first condition of teaching is enthu- 
siasm. The teacher must be in love with what he teaches 
himself, so as to make his pupils love it. Until they love 



NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE RELIGION. 



317 



knowledge for its own sake, the understanding is merely an 
empty house. Give me a teacher who is an enthusiast, and 
it does not make so much difference what he teaches. All 
knowledge is from God ; and I had rather have a teacher 
who teaches me about clams and snakes, lichens and fungi, 
if he is in love with that knowledge, than one who desecrates 
the highest truth by teaching it as though it were uninterest- 
ing and empty. 

I will not say that no one ought to teach that which he 
does not love. But I will say that no instruction is good 
taught otherwise. Anything may be easily taught to chil- 
dren, if the teacher is only interested in teaching it. If the 
children see that their teacher really cares for his subject, 
and believes it important, desirable, charming, they will find 
it desirable and charming too. Positive and solid knowl- 
edge cannot be communicated in any other way than that of 
love. The understanding becomes otherwise a tomb, full 
of dead men's bones ; not a house, with live people in it. 

Let the teacher, therefore, love to teach, and the scholar 
will love to learn. Let him love what he teaches, and the 
scholar will love it too. Love, and only love, will occupy 
this apartment of the House of the Soul. 

II. Consider what will occupy the Conscience. 

The Conscience is another apartment in the soul. This 
also needs something positive, — a positive education, posi- 
tive knowledge, — else it remains empty. Clean, indeed, it 
may be, and garnished, but it is not occupied by any living 
soul or spirit. 

A great deal of morality is only negative. It forbids, but 
does not command. It repels, but does not attract. It 
drives away from evil ; it does not allure to good. Parents 
often say to their children, " You must not do this ; you 
must not do that." This is all that the poor things hear. 
But other children are kindly drawn towards good and 
great thoughts by parents, brothers, and friends ; they are 



818 



NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE RELIGION. 



interested in generous objects, in a good cause, by the con- 
tagious influence of the enthusiasm of those they love. 
They see them lead devout and benevolent lives ; they hear 
them speak inspiring words of truth and deep conviction ; 
they observe the depth and sweep of their convictions and 
aims. This is the only way to teach the conscience, and 
give it positive education. It is by making goodness lovely 
to it. Then the child grows up in a glad atmosphere of joy- 
ful virtue, where gonerosity, kindness, honor, and truth are 
at home ; where the parents are evidently guided by noble 
purposes ; where they are seeking, not small advantages for 
themselves, but to do good to others. The children in these 
homes do not hear low plans and mean purposes debated, 
but see that the lives of their parents, and of all the friends 
who come and go, are actuated by high impulses and far- 
reaching aims. When they thus live in an atmosphere of 
aspiration, generosity, aud good will, it is hard for the chil- 
dren not to turn out noble too. It is the unconscious teach- 
ing of the dinner-table and the fireside talk which educates 
them. 

No one's conscience is educated by negations and prohibi- 
tions. One can thus be barely prevented from doing wrong ; 
he cannot be made to do right. I have seen a great many 
men with this kind of negative conscientiousness, very con- 
scientious not to do anything ; so much afraid of doing 
wrong, that they never would do anything right. They 
seemed to suppose that the only danger was in doing, and 
not that they might equally sin in omitting to do. Their 
sense of responsibility was one-sided ; a battery with all its 
cannon directed one way : not seeing that the devil and his 
angels could storm the fort just as easily in the rear as in 
front ; just as well through the sins of omission as those of 
commission. 

Hence I sometimes mistrust our reforms, they are so nega- 
tive. They aim at putting out or putting down some evil. 



NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE .RELIGION. 319 



They criticise, rebuke, condemn, and destroy. They are like 
the Jewish law, which could make nothing perfect. They 
are like John the Baptist, — able precursors, but only precur- 
sors of Jesus Christ. They prepare the way of a higher 
goodness, nothing more. The temperance reform, the anti- 
slavery reform, the anti-w r ar movement, the non-resistance 
movement, all aim at dispossessing the body politic of some 
social evil. They wish to put the evil spirit out of the man, 
— the evil spirit of slavery, intemperance, and war. So far, 
so well ; but when the house is swept and garnished, if it be 
left empty, the same spirit which produced slavery, intem- 
perance, and war, w r ill return again, bringing new horrors in 
its train, worse than before, because there will be less 
courage to contend w r ith against them than formerly. 

But we will not leave the house empty — why should we ? 
It is not enough to free the slave — you must make a man 
of him, by aiding him in his efforts at self-improvement, by 
encouraging his just ambition. We have reached a higher 
definition of freedom than that of the past age. Then free- 
dom merely meant the taking off of all unjust restraint, and 
letting each man do what he could for himself, isow w T e 
understand by it the exercise of all one's faculties in their 
proper harmony, and this requires that each should aid the 
other to unfold his w r hole nature. Though the chains have 
been snapped from the slaves throughout all the land, the 
work of emancipation is only half done. We still have to 
emancipate the colored race from the effects of their past 
servitude ; from the invisible chains of self-distrust, timidity, 
and indolence. This needs the positive and creative power of 
love and truth. They must be helped, not merely nega- 
tively, by taking away their evils, but positively, by impart- 
ing to them good. 

You cannot destroy slavery simply by an act of emanci- 
pation. You have to do something more. That is only a 
negative reform. You must immediately take hold of the 



820 NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE RELIGION. 



colored freedmen, and teach them how to work for them- 
selves ; give them some friendly aid and counsel ; educate 
them, mentally and morally. Therefore I rejoice in all 
attempts to educate the freedmen. Give them first the price- 
less boon of freedom, but do not leave them so. Help them 
to use it. Show them how to be really free. Develop the 
tastes and habits of self-relying, self-respecting industry. 
To break his fetters does not make a man free. To teach 
him self-control and self-direction does. 

So, too, in putting an end to war, we can only succeed 
when we have provided a proper sphere for the warlike 
element of human nature. Man must fight, and he ought to 
fight ; but he ought not to fight his brother man. But he 
will continue to fight with man, and bloody battles will be 
renewed from time to time, until he understands that heroism 
and chivalry can be eqally shown in attacking and overcoming 
abuses, in saving men from the evils which surround them, 
in contending with the lifeless forces of Nature, and the 
tyrannical sway of ancient frauds and wrongs, Was not 
Paul as great a hero as Napoleon? Was not Grace Darling, 
going out in her skiff amid the roaring storm, and guiding 
it amid the raging sheets of foam which men dared not face, 
and bringing safe to land the shipwrecked mariners, — as 
much of a hero as any soldier who gave his life for his 
country on the bloody field of battle ? You cannot keep men 
from fighting in the dreadful battle-field till you teach them 
to fight in the spirit of Grace Darling, or in that of the 
humble minister of Christ, who goes into the haunts of pes- 
tilence, and kneels by the bed of contagion in the service 
of his Master. 

So, also, it is with other merely negative reforms. The 
Temperance Reform, if it merely makes men leave off 
drinking, is not enough. You must give them better 
tastes, or they will go back to drinking again. Men 
must have some excitement ; something to do, which they 



NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE RELIGION. 



321 



enjoy doing. A man who drinks, has a good time while he 
is drinking. It is a very low sort of a good time — very 
poor excitement. But still it is something. It gives a little 
zest to life. It is very ruinous to body and soul. True, but 
he will do that, if he has not some better excitement given 
to him. He cannot be unclothed, but must be clothed upon. 
Until society is ready to furnish to poor working people in- 
nocent and healthy amusement and excitement, they will 
have sinful and morbid excitement. 

To cure sin is not as easy, therefore, as many suppose. 
Restraint will not do it ; punishment will not do it ; fear 
will not do it. These are only John the Baptists going before 
the Lord. Love must do it ; Christian love, which takes 
men by the hand and helps them. Till the churches and 
societv are readv to do this, there can be no reformation for 
society. 

III. Consider, again, what icill occupy that apartment of 
the Soul which ice call the Heart. 

Out of the Heart are the issues of life. As a man thinks 
in his heart, so is he. TVnat shall fill the heart with pure 
thoughts, noble desires, generous aspirations? What shall 
purify it from evil wishes and low imaginations ? 

The only way to get rid of bad thoughts, is to have good 
ones ; the only way to control bad feelings, is to cherish 
pure and generous ones. Truth only can drive out error ; 
you must love your enemy if you would not hate him. 

Do you find that evil thoughts and imaginations, like foul 
demons, enter your mind? and do you wish to drive them 
out? Have you formed bad habits of thought, of speech, of 
desire, and wish to break them off. Give your mind to 
higher and purer subjects of contemplation ; throw yourself, 
heart and soul, into some generous cause, and work for it. 
Go out of yourself, and take an interest in your neighbor. — 
in his troubles, necessities and sins. You will often best 
save your own soul from sin by not thinking of it at all, but 
21 



322 



NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE RELIGION. 



by giving your thoughts to some generous philanthrophy. to 
some work of righteousness. TThen your heart is full of 
dark and troubled thoughts, go and find a sick child, and 
soothe and entertain it, and you will come home with your 
own mind also refreshed and strengthened. I see men and 
women in the possession of all the outward comforts of life, 
miserable, because they have not learned this secret. They 
drive out their gloomy thoughts, and endeavor laborious- 
ly to purify their mind, and to have it swept and gar- 
nished, but they leave it empty. Once, in the town where 
I lived, a young man destroyed himself. In the morn- 
ing of youth, having boundless wealth at his command, 
he was already weary of his life, and threw it away. His 
health, indeed, was poor, but how many a sick man and 
woman lives on year after year, in patience and serenity, 
because inwardly animated by the angel spirits of love and 
faith. This young man, of whom I speak, was free from 
vice ; but how happy might he have been if he had known 
how to use his great opportunities for the improvement of 
society, for the cause of education, of peace, of moral re- 
form, of religion and virtue. How much happiness would 
have returned to him every day from such an exercise of 
his powers ! How impossible it would have been for him to 
have grown weary of life ! 

But let us not cast censure on the dead, but rather let 
us, the living, take warning. Should we, in his situa- 
tion, have done better than he? I do not know that we 
should. If we do not now use our present opportuni- 
ties to the full, should we have used his? We have no 
right to think so. Such events should teach us how desolate 
and miserable a heart may become which is simply empty ; 
which merely does not know how to come up to the duties 
and opportunittes of its position ; whose faults are only nega- 
tive, not positive. 

There is but one thing which can fill the soul full, so as to 



NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE RELIGION. 



323 



drive out all evil thoughts and passions, and to keep them 
from returning with others worse than themselves. It is 
love — love to God; looking up to him in daily submission, 
penitence, and prayer — love to man ; animating to generous 
labors, and constant sacrifices, to thoughtfulness and interest 
for all around us. When a heart is thus full of love, it is 
safe. Xo evil thought can enter it, no foul spirits of malice, 
lust, and covetousness : no gloomy feelings of doubt, de- 
spair, and life-weariness can conquer its habitual courage 
and peacefulness. Love is what we need ; which suffers long 
and is kind ; love, which is not provoked, and thinks no evil ; 
love, which bears all things, believes all things, hopes all 
things, and endures all things. This never fails. Knowl- 
edge cannot always support us ; there are hours in which the 
richest and keenest intellect is clouded, and the throne of 
thought is shaken. But when the whole head is sick, and 
the whole heart faint, love, faith, and hope continue to pos- 
sess the soul, and give it light in its darkness, and serenity 
amid the stormy hours of trial. Persecuted, we are not 
forsaken ; cast down, we are not destroyed. 

IV. Consider what icill occupy the Imagination, or Pic- 
ture-Gallery of the Soul. 

This, also, is a chamber which must not be left empty. 
It is left empty unless the soul is taught to love beautiful 
things. Hence the value of aesthetic studies ; hence the im- 
portance of teaching it to love beauty in nature, art, poetry, 
music, and sculpture. 

Those who have a taste for this kind of beauty will usually 
have pure minds. Their imaginations will be healthily filled 
with good images, and not unhealthily filled with bad ones. 
The young man who enjoys the sight of mountains, oceans, 
forests ; who loves to draw, to paint, to sketch, to collect 
fiowers, to arrange gardens, to write poetry and read it, to 
talk with artists, is not likely to have his imagination de- 
based by low images and coarse forms of vice. 



324 



NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE RELIGION. 



The same law applies to amusements. The love of recrea- 
tion is natural to man. It is to be supposed, therefore, that 
it was put in him for some good purpose by the Creator. It 
ought to be a house properly occupied. Good recreations 
and amusements should always be provided ; where old 
and young can go together ; husbands and wives and chil- 
dren ; parents, grandparents, and grandchildren. There is a 
play-room in the soul, and it should be provided for. The 
Puritans made a great mistake here. Calvinism thinks 
nature all wrong, hence it banished amusements. The 
more natural it was for people to desire amusements, the 
less Calvinism approves of them. 

But, fortunately, Calvinism, pure and simple, hardly exists 
now in any church. In its unmixed form, it tended to make 
life barren, and the earth empty of interest. Wherever it 
has prevailed, by proscribing innocent amusements, it has 
left the door open for worse ones. Travellers in Moham- 
medan countries, like Palgrave and Lane, describe the same 
noxious results as proceeding from the same cause in those 
lands. In Arabia, in the Wannabee kingdom, where all 
amusements are severely condemned, the coarsest vices take 
their place. 

But now we begin to understand that recreation and 
amusement are wants of human nature. Hurtful amuse- 
ments can only be expelled by substituting healthy ones. If 
people read bad novels, they cannot be cured of this by 
sweeping denunciation of novel-reading, but by providing 
good novels. If the theatre does harm, we can only sup- 
plant it by replacing it with a higher style of dramatic 
entertainment. The coarse and vulgar plays, to which our 
ancestors listened, have given way to a purer and nobler 
order. " The soul," say the Buddhists, - ; is like a leech, — 
it will not let go its hold by its tail, until it has taken hold 
elsewhere by its head." 



NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE RELIGION 



V. Consider, also, the Work-Shop of the Soul. 

Every human being needs work ; and work into which 
he can put his heart. To love one's work is the great need 
of man. Every one wants something to do. The first pa- 
thetic cry of the child, as soon as he has learned to speak, 
is, " What shall I do?" The first duty of parents is to pro- 
vide children with something to do ; some work. It is 
easy enough to keep children out of mischief — only give 
them something to do. Provide suitable work for them, — 
something to cut, to draw, to build, to arrange, to disar- 
range, to pull down, to set up, — then the child is happy 
and good all day long. 

The soul which has occupation is not empty. Xo devil 
can get into it. But I do not call it true occupation to work 
with the hand, while the mind ?nd heart are somewhere else. 
We must put our whole soul into our work, or we cannot do 
it as occupation. Love must go into it, or the soul remains 
empty. Drudgery is not work ; labor done with the hand 
without the heart does not occupy the working faculty. 

What we need is to love our work ; then we are happy, 
whether we are rich or poor. The poor mechanic, to whom 
his occupation is an art, who " treats it as something to be 
always done " as well as it can be done, enjoys it for its own 
sake, apart from its outward results. To do something as 
well as it can be done, makes it a work of art ; to do some 
noble thing as well as it can be done, is high art. Xow to 
the artist, his art is its own reward. The true artist is 
happy, though unknown and poor, without fame, society, or 
comfort. He finds satisfaction enough in his work. Let us 
all do our work as art, and we shall all be happy in doing it. 

For this end, in selecting an occupation, we should think 
not so much of its outward rewards, as its inward adapta- 
tion to our tastes and powers, of its improving influence on 
the mind and character, of its usefulness to society, and its 
need of more cultivators. Then we should not see so many 



326 



NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE RELIGION. 



young men rushing into mercantile pursuits, or into the 
practice of the law, in hopes of gaining wealth or power. 
Then would agriculture be sought out, cherished, cultivated, 
and improved, and the highest intellects devoted to the most 
useful work. 

VI. Consider. a/so, the Oratory of the Soul, or its place 
of Worship. 

This part of the soul also abhors a vacuum ; for wor- 
ship is natural to man. TVe must worship something true 
and good, or else we shall worship something false and evil. 
The only cure for idolatry is true religion. The only cure 
for superstition is spiritual worship. A low form of piety 
can only be dispossessed by a higher form. 

The Mohammedan religion, which worships one God, and 
worships him spiritually, is higher than paganism, higher 
than idolatry, and consequently has driven them out, and 
taken their place in all of south-western Asia and northern 
Africa. But Christianity is higher than Mohammedanism, 
and consequently has conquered it, wherever the two are 
fairly opposed. Protestant Christianity is higher than Ro- 
manism, and accordingly swept it from the face of half 
Europe in the sixteenth century. A better religion alone 
can keep out a poorer one, but it must be positive and living ; 
it must be real and solid : not a form only, nor a name. 

Thus, although Christianity is a higher form of religion 
than that of Mohammed, yet in the eighth century the latter 
overran parts of Christendom, because the Christianity of 
those regions had lost its life and substance. Islam, though 
lower than the gospel, was more real than the Christian faith 
in its neighborhood. It took possession of an empty house : 
that is the explanation of its success. 

So, although the Protestant faith is higher than the Roman 
Catholic, and was able to overcome it easily when it was 
full of life, yet the Catholic Church regained its lost posses- 
sions when Protestantism changed from a matter of faith 



NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE RELIGION. 



327 



to a matter of opinion. When the Catholic Church be- 
came real, and the Protestant became a form, the former 
triumphed again. 

And so, too, I certainly believe that Unitarian, or Liberal 
Christianity, is a higher form of faith than Orthodoxy, and 
must one day replace it. But then it must be full of life and 
substance. A live Orthodoxy will always conquer and drive 
out a dead Liberality, and ought to do so. 

All reaction is of this kind. A reform comes, which, in its 
first enthusiasm, goes farther than it is able to maintain itself. 
The excitement passes, the fire cools. The soul is left empty. 
Incapable of maintaining the higher stand-point, it goes back 
to a lower, where it can hold itself without so much effort. It 
is better to have a religion not quite so deep and high, but 
something which is real, substantial, and safe. The small 
and poor house, which is a home, is better than the palace 
which is empty and cold. 

The condition of the Jewish people, at the time Jesus 
uttered the Parable of the Empty House, was of this sort. 
The Law of Moses has cleansed the national conscience. To 
this, Greek culture had been added by the Roman conquest. 
It had given a superficial varnish to the Jewish intellect ; it 
had veneered it with a polished surface. But because no 
high spirit of religion occupied the national mind, because 
they went through a formal routine of outside ceremonies, 
they were exposed to relapse into the hypocrisy of Pharisee- 
ism and the scepticism of Sadduceeism. Because God's 
leaven was not in them, they were exposed to the leaven of 
the Pharisee and the Sadducee. 

For, while the substance of Jewish morality is positive, 
its form is mostly negative. Its substance is love to God, 
and love to man ; its form is in the negations of the Ten 
Commandments. 

u Thou shalt have no other God but me." 

" Thou shalt not make a graven image. " 



828 



NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE RELIGION. 



u Thou shalt do no murder." 

" Thou shalt not steal." 

" Thou shalt not bear false witness." 

u Thou shalt not covet." 

This is the difference between mere law, in all its forms, 
and the gospel. The law is negative, morality is negative, 
ethics is negative, culture is negative ; and they leave the 
soul swept and garnished, but empty. 

Only love can occupy the soul. Love to God, producing 
love to man, making everything which God has made inter- 
esting, making all nature, all knowledge, all duty, all human 
beings, all life, all work, interesting, — making religion, not 
a thing of form and ceremony, not a thing of opinion and 
creed, but a life full of love. 

Such a religion alone, which is the gospel of Christianity, 
— such alone can fill the soul, and occupy it entirely, so that 
there is no room for anything else to come in. 

On the coast of Northumberland stands a castle on a high 
hill, built by an old Saxon king, bought by Lord Crewe, 
Bishop of Durham, and devoted to charity. It contains a 
granary, in which grain is sold to the poor at first cost. It 
has groceries, conducted on the same principle ; and an infir- 
mary, where advice and medicine are given gratis ; fifteen 
hundred persons annually apply for goods at these stores. 
It has large free schools for boys and girls, to whom books 
and paper are given without charge. Twenty poor girls are 
boarded, educated, clothed, and provided for in the castle. 
It also contains apartments and beds for thirty shipwrecked 
seamen ; a patrol watches the coast every stormy night for 
eight miles ; a reward is offered to those who shall first discover 
a wreck ; a nine-pounder is fired at regular intervals during 
stormy nights ; a flag is kept flying, and a bell in the tower 
tolling, as signals to those at sea, or for those who have come 
to land ; provisions are sent to vessels which may need that 
aid. These, and other arrangements, are for the purpose 
of helping vessels in distress on that stormy coast. 



NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE RELIGION. 



329 



This castle symbolizes the spirit of the coming age. The 
good spirit has mastered the evil one, has taken from him 
his weapons, and is using the means made to destroy men's 
lives for the purpose of saving them. The cannon is fired 
to inspire courage and hope. The flag flies, not to call the 
country to fight with their neighbors, but to aid them. As 
daring courage, as generous heroism, is displayed in saving 
men as once in destroying them. The evil spirit of War is not 
only cast out of his ancient home, but the house, swept and 
garnished, is not left empty ; it is filled with the heroism of 
love and good will. 

A religion of love, which makes God lovely to the heart ; 
which makes nature, duty, life, death, and eternity lovely ; 
which fills life and death with beauty, hope, and joy, — this 
alone can, but this always can, keep out of this house of the 
soul every evil spirit, and this, therefore, is salvation, is 
perfect safety. It is being filled with all the fulness of God. 

The result of all is, that the house of the soul is only 
occupied fully and really when God and Christ come and 
dwell in it. It is empty till then ; there is a sense of 
vacancy in it till we feel that God dwells w T ith us, and in 
us ; then, all is good, all joyful, all safe. Then the soul is 
happy. 

" Where God abides, contentment is an honor, 
Such guerdon Meekness knows ; 
His peace within her, and his smile upon her, 
Her saintly way she goes. 

" The angels bend their eyes upon her going 
To guard her from annoy ; 
Heaven fills her full with tranquil overflowing 
Of calm, celestial joy. 

" The white-robed saints, the throne stars singing under, 
This state all meekly bear, 
Whose pauseless praise wells up from hearts that wonder 
That ever they come there.'* 



XXVIII. 



WEEDS. 

Luke viii. 7 : " The thorns sprang up with it, and choked it." 

TN order to have a good garden, what do we want? 
JL First. We want good soil. 

Secondly. We want a good climate, good exposure, sun 
enough, and rain enough. 

Thirdly. We want good plants, good seed, good kinds of 
vegetables and fruits. And, 

Fourthly. We need to keep out weeds by sufficient hoeing 
and digging. 

We may have the three first conditions ; but without 
the fourth, we shall not have the good garden. We may 
have a fine, rich soil; but the better the soil is, the more 
weeds it will produce. We may have a fine, warm, and 
moist climate ; but this will develop the weeds quite as fast 
as it does fruits and flowers. We may have the choicest 
plants ; but it is throwing them away to plant them, and 
then to let them be choked. The most ignoraDt person who 
undertakes to raise a few vegetables knows this, and acts 
accordingly. He knows he must keep his garden well 
weeded, or he has wasted his land, time, and money. 

Human life is a garden, to which the same rules apply. 
It is a garden in which God desires to raise fruits and flow- 
ers of immortal beauty. Christ came to order it and arrange 
it as Chief Gardener. He fences in piece after piece, to 

(330) 



WEEDS. 



331 



become the kingdom of heaven. The wild, hard earth of 
mankind, with its wars, its cruelty, its barbarism, its sensu- 
ality, its selfishness, he means to turn into a lovely garden ; 
bearing the fruits of love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentle- 
ness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance. He calls 
on us to come into his garden, and to be laborers with him. 
There is a good soil, and a good climate, and good seed, all 
ready. Labor alone is wanted. The soil is the human 
heart. It is good soil ; because, when well ploughed by life's 
struggles and sorrows, warmed by the sun of joy, and soft- 
ened by the dews and rains of sorrow, it can nourish the 
seeds. But it will produce w r eeds, and feed them too, if we 
neglect it. Theologians argue that the human heart is very 
bad, because it yields all sorts of vices and follies so easily. 
But the better the soil, the more it tends to weeds. You do 
not call a piece of ground bad ground, because weeds grow 
readily in it ; you call it good ground. So the heart, which 
has a great capacity for good, has also a great capacity for 
evil. Therefore, though the human heart tends to evil so 
easily, I call it good ground. 

There is also a good Climate. It is our daily life of joy 
and sorrow, temptation, trial, labor, pleasure. The relations 
of home, of school, of business, of amusement, — they are all 
meant to educate us for heaven here and hereafter. If we 
are successful and prosperous, that is a warm, sunny day. 
If we are poor and disappointed, that is a sudden, gusty 
shower, which bends the plants to the ground, and pours 
torrents of water which cut the earth in gulleys ; or a long, 
cold, driving storm. But sun and rain come, both of them, 
to ripen the vegetation ; and it could not ripen without them. 
Nevertheless, sun and rain ripen weeds just as fast as flow- 
ers. Prosperity develops gratitude, and also pride ; wealth 
increases generosity, and also luxury ; sorrow causes us to be 
patient, or to repine ; poverty produces courage, or discour- 
agement and despair. But as we do not quarrel with the 



332 



WEEDS. 



sun and rain for quickening the weeds, so let us not attack 
Providence for the evil tendencies which it increases. 

The Seed is the holy Word of Jesus. His words, which, 
sown in thousands of hearts, have produced new hope and 
trust, a new purpose of life, a new sense of the beauty 
of holiness, a new feeling of responsibility, — this is the 
good seed which Christ sows in his field. 

Having, therefore, a good Soil, a good Climate, and good 
Seed, let us consider what are the Weeds we have to con- 
tend against. 

1. Care is a weed. 

It roots itself deeply. It also twists its roots among those 
of the good plants. It is hard to get at it, to get it out ; yet 
it is a very bad weed. 

Care usually puts on a fine appearance in the garden. 
It really looks like a good, useful plant, and not at all 
a bad weed. It calls itself duty or necessity. It often asks 
that the plants shall be plucked up to make it room ; and 
many an inexperienced gardener removes delicious berries 
or fair roses that they may not be in the way of this imper- 
tinent weed. Martha requested of Jesus that Mary's devo- 
tion might be pulled up, to give room for some of her care to 
be planted in the place of it. But the Saviour said, " No, 
Martha ; thou art careful about much, but Mary has chosen 
the good part which shall not be taken from her." 

Jesus did not love care. In his first sermon, when his 
pulpit was the mountain-top, he preached against it. " Take 
no thought for the morrow," said he. " Be not anxious 
about your life, what ye shall eat, and drink, and wear." 
And Paul says, "Be careful for nothing." But in New 
England we are a very careful people. In our cheerfulest 
hours care is not far away. Our children become careful 
and anxious too soon ; they are made careful about their 
studies or rank at school, and soon about their success in 
life. What an atmosphere of care broods over Boston ! — 



WEEDS. 



333 



worse than the November fogs over London ! No one can 
escape from it. You meet a man galloping cheerfully over 
the Mill-dam. His horse carries double — black Care sits be- 
hind him. The merchant is anxious about his business ; his 
wife is anxious about her evening party. His anxieties are 
at their height about two o'clock ; hers about nine. Then 
what cares are involved in housekeeping, and especially in 
keeping house like every one else, having your brasses just 
as bright as theirs, and your door-steps just as clean, and 
your children dressed just like theirs ! " Take time," we 
say, " O husband and wife, O father and mother, to see each 
other and your children. Walk together on the Common ; 
sing and chat, and be kind and pleasant together, and with 
your neighbors. " " We cannot," you reply ; " our duties 
must be attended to." Thus it is that Care gets itself bap- 
tized again, changes its name without permission of the 
General Court, and makes itself known to us as duty. But 
I know you, O Care, and I will not let you impose on us by 
this fine name. Our duty is to live ; to be healthy in body 
and mind, to trust in God. The primal necessity is to have 
time for rest, and happy intercourse, and kind, neighborly 
visits. Does man live by bread only, and not by every 
word out of God's mouth? 

Care chokes the Word. It bends our backs, and turns 
our faces to the ground, and we cannot see God's heaven 
over us. It makes us the slave of stocks and ships, of car- 
pets and chairs, of fashion and opinion. It is a bad weed, 
and ought to be rooted out. 

2. Pleasure is another weed which chokes the Word. 
Care on one side, pleasure on the other, — pleasure, when 
loved, when pursued as an end ; pleasure, when quaffed by 
itself in full draughts, instead of being breathed as the 
atmosphere which lightens toil and accompanies duty. 
Pleasure should not go by itself, but walk hand in hand 
with Use ; — as architects say, an ornament ought not to be 



834 



WEEDS. 



put on to a building, but you should make the necessary- 
parts also ornamental. People too often rush from care to 
pleasure, and from pleasure back to care, thus doubly chok- 
ing the word of life. It is not pleasure which is bad, but 
the love of pleasure ; just as it is not riches which are bad, 
but the trust in riches. God made everything pleasant to 
the eye and ear and hand. The more pleasure we have in 
life, the better we are. A sunny, smiling, cheerful, hearty, 
good-humored person is a much better Christian than a sour, 
sad, gloomy one ; though the former may not be thought 
nearly so pious as the latter. We are to become as little 
children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. See how 
children are pleased with everything — with digging in the 
ground, paddling in the water, making houses of sand and 
sticks ! So should we find pleasure — healthy pleasure — in 
work, in study, in talk, in rest, in a bright morning, in a 
driving snow-storm, in a rosy sunset ; in saying a kind word, 
in doing a kind deed. True pleasure is all around, ready to 
flow over the heart from all of life. But when we love 
pleasure, then we refuse to enjoy the present moment, look- 
ing for some special, separate enjoyment to be had to-mor- 
row or next day. This aiming at pleasure as an end 
destroys present enjoyment, and chokes the Word of Jesus. 

All duty and all real life are in the present moment. Now 
is the accepted time. To be able to plunge, with our whole 
mind and heart, into the present work, is the great secret 
both of joy and of Christian progress. "Whatever thy 
hand finds to do, do it with thy might." What thy hand 
finds ; not what thy fancy imagines, not what thy mind con- 
ceives ; but what thy hand finds, what is close at hand. 
But care and the love of pleasure both cause the mind 
to be preoccupied, distracted ; the present moment goes for 
nothing ; we are looking out, with anxiety or hope, to the 
to-morrow. 

The human soul is not very large ; it will not hold a great 



WEEDS. 



335 



many things at the same time. If you fill it with cares and 
pleasures, there will be little room for Christian faith, and 
hope, and love. 

Especially pleasure in doing good, in saying good, wishing 
good, — this pleasure makes us good, saves us from care. 

TVe need religion for active duty, for active obedience, for 
daily work. 

3. One weed which chokes the Word is, a certain false 
shame about religion. There is a kind of mock-modesty in 
regard to prayer, and trust, and reliance on God. » People 
are too modest to pray ; they do not think they are fit to 
pray; they keep away from God and heaven; just as little 
children sometimes, when you call them, put their finger 
in their mouths, and stand and look at you. But if 
some barking dog should come and frighten the child, 
it would forget its diffidence, and run straight to you to be 
protected. This is the advantage of terror in religion, to 
most people. When men are thoroughly frightened about 
hell, they forget their diffidence, and run straight to God, 
and pray to him for help. These are the uses of danger : to 
break down our cold, icy habits, with which we freeze our- 
selves till we lose all power of natural motion. I was 
interested in reading a simple narrative, written by a 
Massachusetts soldier, who escaped from the rebels, and 
travelled day and night, seeking the Union lines, always in 
danger from secessionists, and always sheltered, protected, 
and guided by the slaves. Finally, they found for him a 
canoe, dug out of a log, and provided him with a bag of 
provisions, and directions, and sent him on his way down the 
river. But on the bank, before taking leave of him, they 
said, u We'se goin' to pray for you, massa ; " and so, as 
long as he could see them, they were kneeling on the sod, on 
the river bank, praying for him. No wonder that he felt 
safer, as he drifted on his way, under the shelter of those 
effectual, fervent prayers. No wonder if he teas safer 



836 



WEEDS. 



for them, and if lie thought wonderingly with himself of 
the power and beauty of prayer, believing in it as he never 
had before. For in the face of real danger this weed of 
mock-modesty disappears. 

4. One of the weeds which Jesus mentions is the deceit- 
fulness of riches. Riches mean something different to every 
different person. A Savage is rich when he gets a couple of 
nails and an iron hoop. An Irish laborer is rich when he 
owns a little shanty and a cow. A Scholar is rich when he 
is able tp buy a dictionary and grammar with which to study 
some new language. An Artist is rich who gets enough to 
take him to Rome, so as to live or study there. Dean Swift 
said he expected to be rich when he could have one hundred 
pounds a year for life, with a small house, and garden at- 
tached. " Well," says he, " I have it, and more ; but then 
I think now that it is mine only till I die. 

1 1 often think 'twould sound more clever, 
To me and to my heirs forever.' " 

The deceitfulness of riches lies in this : that they make us 
imagine ourselves poor unless we can get a little more than 
we have. They cheat us by leading us on and on, till at 
last we drop into the grave, never having quite reached the 
end we had before us, never quite satisfied, never having 
quite enough. 

5. Fashion is another weed which chokes the Word. Now, 
we talk of fashionable people as though there were only a 
few such ; but the truth is, we are all fashionable people ; 
we all follow the fashions ; only some follow rapidly and 
close at hand, the others at a longer interval. The Word of 
God is choked by the fashions of this world. We must all 
live in a certain way, dress in a certain way, spend our time 
in a certain way. Why? Because other people do so. 
Once in a while we find a man or woman who goes alone, 
and does what he likes to do, and has a good time. I do 



WEEDS. 



337 



not mean that there is any object to be gained in running 
against every prejudice and every custom of society. We 
then should have to spend all our time in fighting fashion, 
which would be just as bad as to spend our time in following 
fashion. But what I like is to see people quietly, unostenta- 
tiously, modestly, doing what seems right to them, whether 
the rest of mankind hear or forbear. Such persons only are 
the salt of the earth. Non-conformity is always in order in 
this world ; for most of us waste life in imitating other peo- 
ple, and doing what does us no good, and no good to any 
one else, simply because it is the custom. 

6. But when you have rooted up this weed of conformity, 
there is danger that another weed,, quite as bad, will take its 
place ; and that is egotism. As soon as one is able to stand 
alone and to go alone, he begins to think of himself as being 
the most wonderful being in nature. He admires his own 
independence ; and that also chokes the Word. Among this 
class of persons prevails what has been called " the triumphant 
reign of the first person singular." They die, like Narcissus, 
of always looking at themselves. There can be no healthy 
goodness except when we forget all about ourselves, and 
just take a hearty interest in other things, other persons, in 
God, Man, Nature. I think boys playing a game of base on 
the Common, and only thinking of their game, not of them- 
selves, are better Christians than philanthropists and saints 
who are always looking at their work with one eye, and at 
themselves with the other, and intimating in every word 
their own importance, their own position, their own activity, 
zeal, and generosity. That, I do believe, is the worst weed 
of all, and one of the hardest to get out of the garden. 

7. Then there is another weed of which I must speak ; 
and that is the weed of talk. We can kill almost any virtue 
by talking about it. When you plant a flower, you shade it 
with a shingle ; so, when you plant any good purpose in 
your soul, keep it shaded. Do not talk of it. When you 

22 



338 



WEEDS. 



do a good act, keep it shaded. Do not talk about your 
neighbors' faults or follies ; do not gossip or prattle about 
others ; do not get a habit of saying smart things (or what 
you think smart things), to make others ridiculous. These 
are the weeds which choke the Word. By talking fifteen 
minutes in a cynical tone, or a tone of scepticism, or 
persiflage, or a tone of contempt for others, you can kill out 
every good purpose and feeling in your own soul. So, 
Beware of talk. 

The difference between sentiment, which is good, and sen- 
timentalise, which is bad, is simply the difference between 
talking and not talking about one's feelings. Sentiment is 
feeliug become conscious of itself, and capable of under- 
standing itself — feeling which is also thought. Sentimen- 
talism is sentiment which utters itself. The process from 
feeling to sentiment, and from sentiment to sentimentalism, 
is like that of the sweet juice of the grape passing through 
fermentation. Feeling is the sweet grape juice. Fermen- 
tation changes it into sentiment, and so makes wine. Stop 
there, and you have something good, which maketh glad 
the heart of man ; but let it go further, and ferment again, 
you have vinegar. Feeling is sweet ; sentiment is exhilarat- 
ing ; but sentimentalism is sour, and by no means agreeable. 

Consider the beauty of silence, which displaces all empty 
gabble, and leaves us alone with God and the soul ! 

There are hours of silence, when, perhaps, two friends, 
long estranged or separated, meet once more in love ; when 
the son, who has wandered round the world, returns to the 
old farm-house, and sits between his white-haired father and 
mother, and does not say, " I have sinned," and they do 
not say, " This our son was dead, and is alive again ; " but 
silence is his confession, and silence is their blessing on his 
head. And often in the deepening night, when friends are 
together, when the talk grows still, and the company sit 
without speech, but feeling the electric chain of sympathetic 



WEEDS. 



339 



thought in which we are darkly bound, have we not felt 
what no words can utter, and said what no language can 
tell? When alone with God and ourselves, in struggles no 
man knowetk, in sorrows with which the stranger cannot 
intermeddle ; longing for death, though it comes not ; when 
we would dig for it as for hid treasure, — in such struggles 
as these, which were never told, and which we can never 
tell, there may have been hours in which the seed germi- 
nated, swelling in silence in the dark earth, and thrusting up 
its shoot through the dampness and the cold, to bear fruit 
hereafter which should make glad the heart of God and 
man. 

8. I once saw this motto put up by a young man over his 
door : 44 Do it now." It was a warning to him not to put off 
till to-morrow what ought to be done to-day. Procrastination 
is another weed which chokes the Word. Most persons like 
to put off their duties, and imagine they shall be better able 
to do them some other time than now. I know one man, who 
not only answers his letters as soon as he receives them, but 
when he gets a number of letters, reads one and answers it 
before he reads the next. There is something heroic in 
that — almost stoical. Most people are like Coleridge, to 
whom Charles Lamb one day said, " My dear Coleridge, 
you would be the best Christian in the world were it not 
for this : if you ever have a duty to do, you don't do it." 
Most men need compulsion, the spur of necessity, to keep 
them from putting off their duties. Postponed duties choke 
the good seed and good plants ; for they weigh on the mind, 
and we carry the burden, not only of what we ought to do 
to-day, but also of what we ought to have clone yesterday 
and the day before. So, at last, in sheer self-disgust, we 
go and do the long-procrastinated work, and find, to our sur- 
prise, that it is a very easy thing to do, and might just as 
well have been done a month ago, and then we should have 
saved ourselves a great deal of anxiety and remorse. Pro- 
crastination chokes the Word. 



340 



WEEDS. 



More than all else, people postpone their religion. They 
think it best to put that off till they are old, or sick, or dying. 
But religion is daily bread : it is meat for to-day as well as 
to-morrow. We need our religion now, not when we are go- 
ing to die. It is not a preparation for death — it is a means 
of life. We do not need religion half as much when we are 
dying, as we do now when we are living. God will do all 
for us then — then we shall have nothing to do at all. 
There is nothing easier than to die, for we are wholly 
passive in that supreme moment. 

Let us, then, remember, that, in this great garden of. 
life, there is, first, good soil in every heart which God 
has made. Our nature is from God, therefore it is good. 
Do not find fault with your nature, for that was sent you 
by God, and cannot be bad. That is good soil for the 
plants he wished to have grow in it. To be sure, there are 
different kinds of good soil, adapted to different plants. So 
each man has a character and nature of his own, but each 
nature is good for something. Next, there is a good climate. 
That, too, may differ from year to year. Last year we did 
not have as much rain as we wished — this year we had too 
much, and too little sun. Nevertheless, each year probably 
was best for us as it was. So one man's life is very sunny 
and warm all the w r ay through, and the life of another very 
cool and shaded ; too wet, too cold, we say ; but wait till the 
end — the end may explain it all, and show it to be good. 

"All as God wills, who wisely heeds 
To give or to withhold, 
And knoweth more of all my needs, 
Than all my prayers have told." 

Then there is good seed in the gospel. God sends us liv- 
ing convictions of truth. He shows us, day by day, the 
beauty of holiness, the beauty of generosity, the depths of 
true piety, the heights of a good purpose. This is good 



WEEDS. 341 

seed. When Jesus said, " God is a Spirit, and those who 
worship him must worship him in Spirit and in Truth," 
he planted in humanity the seed of a free and spiritual 
religion, which should make man one with God. When he 
said, u If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, 
will he give him a stone?" he planted another seed, which 
would sooner or later destroy all terror of an angry Deity, 
and leave us with the feeling of children safe in a Father's 
hands. When he said, " I am the Resurrection and the 
Life," he planted a seed which should grow up into a con- 
viction of Immortality, before which all fear of death should 
pass away. When he told the story of the Prodigal, he 
planted the seed of infinite Faith in the tender love of God 
to his children. When he told of the Good Samaritan, 
he planted the seed of universal Christian brotherhood. 

There is good seed, and enough of it. What we have to 
do, is to keep this garden of our life free from weeds. It 
is a very tiresome work, and never ends. The gardener, 
who has plucked up many weeds to-day, finds enough more 
to-morrow. Weeds and stones — there is no end to them. 
But to keep the garden weeded is the condition of bearing 
any good flowers and fruits. 

So let us pluck up daily, out of our life, these evil weeds 
of Egotism, Vanity, Sensuality, Indolence, Procrastination, 
Covetousness, Carefulness, Love of Riches, Love of Pleas- 
ure, Idle Talking ; and so may God help us to present our- 
selves at last faultless before the presence of his glory with 
exceeding joy ; and to Him, the only wise God, our Father, 
be all glory and praise, forever and forever. 



XXIX.* 



"THE SUMMER IS ENDED." 
Jer. viii. 20: "The summer is ended." 

THE royal summer is over, — queenly season of the 
year. To all of us, sitting here to-day, God has made 
the present of another summer. It is as though a great case or 
casket had been left at each door, composed of three divis- 
ions, — each division a month ; each month divided again into 
thirty parts, each part a day. Then, in each day was con- 
tained how much of golden sunshine, sweet flowers, rich 
fruits, — vegetables and fruits filled with the sunshine, and 
with currents of electric life running; through all their cells ! 
As each day's separate gift was opened, the little children 
stood expectant to see what was to come from it. Straw- 
berries and roses came together in June, raspberries and 
cherries in July — a long succession of many-colored, many- 
scented plants, diversifying the year. As men plant beds of 
flowers on their lawn, a mass of red here, and purple there, 
and white beyond, — diversifying its aspect with these gay 
colors, — - so God has planted the year with these alternating 
and succeeding fruits, and flowers, and vegetables. Mean- 
time the mornings have dawned serene, and melted into 
noon, and journeyed on to soft evening and silent night, with 
troops of summer stars. Winds have played with the sum- 

* Printed in the "Monthly Religious Magazine," in 1865. 

(342) 



THE SUMMER IS ENDED. 



343 



mer clouds, and swept them on their way through the great 
depths of blue air, and have coursed through the leaves, 
waking them to a many-toned language and song. Each 
has had its own voice — the poplars, with their long foot- 
stalks, garrulous and prattling evermore ; stately firs and 
spruce, with more solemn voice ; and pines, cutting the air 
with their needles into delicate threads of melody. The 
birds have sung, the brooks rippled, all day long ; the ocean 
has swung long, steadfast waves, an ever-beating pulse, on the 
rocky shore. So has each day come, a new gift from God, 
freighted with beauty, use, health, instruction, opportunity. 
And, having received such a gift, ought we not to stop this 
morning, and thank the Giver, with grateful hearts? 

The casket this year has overflowed at both ends. The 
summer came to us early, and went out reluctantly. Sum- 
mer came in spring, and staid over into autumn ; so that 
we here, in cold New England, have had as much summer 
this year as men usually have in Maryland or Virginia. 
We have been moved five degrees farther south, and our 
isothermal line has shifted accordingly. 

But better than longer sunlight and longer summer has 
been the happiness we have had in the constant presence of 
peace. For four years we could enjoy no summer ; for our 
brothers were toiling in the hot south, or sick in southern 
hospitals, or fallen on southern fields of battle. Moreover, 
the nation's fate was hanging suspended every hour on the 
dread arbitrament of battle. One morning in 1862, at the 
end of May, after Banks's retreat, telegrams from Washing- 
ton called so loudly for help, that the Governor of Massa- 
chusetts summoned the whole fighting force of the State to 
meet on Boston Common. Another morning we rose from 
our beds to hear the strange story of the Merrimac " and 

Monitor," the sinking of the " Cumberland " and "Con- 
gress," and the danger to our fort, fleet, and cities suddenly 
averted by the providential arrival of that nondescript man- 



344 



THE SUMMER IS ENDED. 



of- war — the only thing possible which could have saved 
Fortress Monroe and Washington. Amid such excitements 
as attended McClellan's campaign in the Peninsula, Pope's 
campaign, Burnside's battle and Hooker's, — ■ how could we 
think of summer or spring, of flowers or sea-shore? Four 
summers came and went almost unnoticed. But now, with 
peace around us, with the nation safe, with slavery at an 
end, we draw a long breath, and, with deep thanksgiving 
at the bottom of our heart, look out once more on the face 
of Nature, and find everything u very good," as at first in 
Paradise. 

" The world's un withered countenance 
Is fresh as on creation's day." 

God, after his manner of giving, has given this luxuriant, 
abounding summer to all of us. His sun shines, his rain 
falls, on all his children. He does not sell summer, — he 
gives it. It rolls over the whole land, one great wave of 
heat, light, verdure, animation, growth. It comes to the 
children of the poor in the country, on the prairie, and in 
the city, and makes a vacation for them, by sending them to 
a new school. Even the children in the city can go to the 
Common, or to the Public Garden, and see some little scraps 
of Nature, — kiss the hem of her royal robe, — gather the 
crumbs which fall from her affluent table. But in the 
country, how the little children revel in the long summer 
days ! How they wander through the woods, and paddle on 
the lakes, and seek wild berries in the field, and are all the 
time in God's great primary school, learning the alphabet of 
his wisdom, goodness, and power, — learning to read the 
monosyllabic lessons of divine beauty and order ! They 
walk with God, as the disciples walked with Jesus to Em- 
maus, and their hearts burn within them as he talks to them 
by the way, and opens to them his elder Scripture, — the 
oldest testament of all, — the tables of the covenant, written 
by his own finger on the rocky tablets of Nature. 



THE SUMMER IS ENDED. 



345 



For Nature is not only overflowed with bounty for our joy, 
— she is a school where we are sent to learn. " Man," says 
Bacon, " is her interpreter and servant." What have you 
learned this summer? You have gone to school among the 
mountains, by the side of the ocean, amid the quiet fields of 
farming New England. You have sat under elms in the 
Connecticut valley, and read your book ; and your eye has 
wandered up to the massy multitude of leaves above, wav- 
ing and flickering like a mighty army on its march ; light 
flashed from ten thousand bayonets. And perhaps you have 
thought how God, descending from his lofty throne, cared 
for every little leaf, cutting it into its own curve of beauty ; 
and you knew that this universal Father must touch with an 
equally patient skill every budding thought and purpose in 
the human heart of his children. You have walked on the 
long, sandy beach, and seen the ceaseless roll and break of 
the surf, — seen the immeasurable smile of the ocean, — and 
calmness has come into your heart, while you said, " The 
sea is His. This ocean he rolls daily into a thousand gulfs 
and bays ; he sends its tidal waves sweeping round the 
globe. He lashes it with the tempest ; he smooths it with 
the calm. He sends its currents, like rivers of the sea, 
ocean streams, bringing ice-water from the poles to cool the 
tropics ; bringing heated water from the equator to melt the 
ice round Spitzbergen, and make a little summer ten 
degrees from the pole." 

You have gone among the mountains, and have there 
looked at those sublime forms, rosy in morning and evening 
twilight, carrying up thousands of acres of woods and rocky 
pastures into the sky, and from whose bare tops you have 
looked over a panorama a hundred miles in diameter. So 
the sense of grandeur and majestic power sinks into the 
soul. Here, in these untrodden wildernesses, amid these 
awful solitudes, man ceases to think of himself, and thinks 
of God. 



846 



THE SUMMER 15 ENDED. 



Thus Xature is a school, — primary school, grammar 
school, high school, university, all in one. She teaches little 
children their alphabets, while they are at play ; teaches 
them elementary lessons of the qualities of things, of hard 
and soft, heavy and light, resistance, momentum, ductile, 
malleable, and elastic. These are her object-lessons. Then 
she takes those a little older, and shows them the grammar 
of the world, the laws of language in sea and sky. Man 
at work learns how things are related to each other, how 
they fit together and make sentences. TThen a carpenter 
builds a house, and the foundation is not good, nor the wood 
well seasoned, nor the room well arranged, that is an un- 
grammatical sentence. It cannot be parsed. Work carries 
us farther into the knowledge of things than play ; for it 
makes us verify everything. The men who dig, and plant, 
and mine, and manufacture ; who make shoes and hats ; who 
spin and weave, manufacture glass, make watches, print 
books, — learn necessarily the qualities of things and the 
laws of Xature. Children playing are in the primary school ; 
man working is in the grammar school. But we only enter 
the high school and university when we go farther, and take 
up that greatest work of life, of which the elements are 
conscience, liberty, and love. To this all things lead, all 
invite. Summer and winter, nature and society, success 
and failure/life and death, — all point to this highest aim of 
ail — spiritual growth, religious progress, the salvation of 
the soul. 

But this, Xature, by herself, cannot teach. She becomes a 
university, for this higher teaching, only as she is interpreted 
for us by God's voice through inspired souls, by God's voice 
in our own soul. Then the school becomes a church. 

If the summer has brought you only passive pleasure, 
only selfish indulgence, then it has been wasted. Eest is 
good, and joy is good, but as they lead to something higher 
and better. For man is so made that he can never rest 



THE SUMMER IS ENDED. 



347 



contented in any merely passive joy. He can only be con- 
tented when he is making progress. There are no landing- 
places on the stairway of human ascent. You may give a 
man or woman every wish of their heart. You may give 
them the purse of Fortunatus, never empty ; the miraculous 
carpet, on which they can journey through the air, from 
place to place, over sea and land, by a mere wish. They 
may have St. Leon's gift of renewed youth ; they may go to 
the tropics, and have a perpetual summer. But all this is 
not heaven. All this, by itself, will not satisfy them for 
more than a few weeks. The soul is not made to be satis- 
fied so. The only thing which satisfies it, and makes a per- 
fect rest, which turns all things to gold, and earth to heaven, 
is a heavenly life ; that is, a life in which we have plenty to 
know, plenty to love, and plenty to do, and are making 
progress to more knowledge, love, and use, all the time. 

It was to teach us this that Christ came ; to teach us this 
that the Holy Spirit comes daily to our soul ; that God 
knocks at the door of our hearts. 

This teaches us that we only have plenty to know, when 
we see God in all things ; only plenty to love, when we love 
God in all his creatures ; only plenty to do, when we serve 
him by making ourselves useful to all. 

I have taken my text from the passage in Jeremiah which 
says, " The summer is ended." But this text is commonly 
chosen as the subject of the last sermon preached at a re- 
vival meeting. When all the converts have been baptized 
and taken into the church, then the minister preaches a ser- 
mon from this passage : " The harvest is passed, the summer 
is ended, and we are not saved." 

I also would ask, "Are we saved?" Summer-rest and 
joy will not save us. All the joy in the universe heaped on 
us would not save us. Put us into heaven, put us by the 
right hand of God, — that will not save us. It is to drink of 
the cup which Christ drinks of, and to be baptized with his 



348 



THE SUMMER IS ENDED. 



baptism, that saves us. We are safe, then, — safe from the 
perils which belong to the great power of freedom which is 
in all of us, — only when we are doing what Christ did ; 
seeing God in all things, loving God in all things, and serv- 
ing God by serving all his children. He who is living in 
this spirit, even though he is no saint, though he has a thou- 
sand faults, though he is stumbling and falling day by day, 
though he seems to himself a poor creature, and does not 
seem much better to any one else, is safe — safe here, safe 
hereafter. All things will work for his good, and he will 
not be afraid of any evil tidings. 

Evil tidings are always arriving. Danger is always near. 
We seem to have been living, even in this peaceful summer, 
in the midst of terrible dangers and fearful crimes. The 
sweetness of nature has not saved us. Fiends in the form 
of men commit awful crimes in the midst of our peaceful 
villages, and pollute serene Nature with their brutal deeds. 
Men in the enjoyment of social ease and affluence rob and 
cheat those w r ho trust them, till we can hardly tell who is to 
be believed. A young man, who already in youth enjoys a 
colossal fortune, takes to gambling in stocks and money, and 
loses four millions of dollars at this enormous Rouge et Noir 
table which we call the Gold Board. A dear child in the 
midst of placid nature, in the hour of amusement, struck by 
a sudden accident, drops dead ; and we shall see no more 
the fair face, hear no more the brilliant sentences, know no 
more here of that accomplished soul. What shall make us 
safe? Not summer days, not the shield of devoted love, not 
all the bulwarks which civilization and fortune place around 
us : nothing can make us safe but a life hid with Christ in God. 
And by this I mean nothing mystical, nothing extraordinary : 
I mean the simple purpose and habit of living with our 
heavenly Father wherever we are, — being in his presence ; 
seeing him in nature, history, life ; and going, as Christ 
went, about his business, while we do our own. Then w r e are 



THE SUMMER IS ENDED. 



349 



safe, even on a railroad train, even in a brokers' board on 
Wall Street, just as safe as in a church or prayer-meeting. 
Then, if we fall, struck dead by sudden accident, we fall, as, 
in the play of Lear, Gloster thinks himself falling from 
Dover cliff, and drops on the soft grass by his feet. We 
fall, through death, into the arms of God outspread to re- 
ceive us. We fall from love into larger love ; from knowl- 
edge into deeper knowledge ; from usefulness here into the 
uses, whatever they may be, of the great world yonder. 

The sun, which makes summer, seems the natural type of 
Deity. Astronomers tell us, indeed, that in winter the earth 
is nearer the sun than in summer. So sometimes we are 
nearer God in the chill and loneliness of our heart, than in our 
joy. We feel that we are wandering away into outer dark- 
ness ; but God holds us near himself, waiting till our hearts 
turn towards him, and so receive their summer affluence and 
influence out of his radiance. Summer comes, not because 
the sun is any nearer to us, but because our part of the earth 
is turned up to it. Turn up your hearts to God. Sursum 
corda. Lift them up towards God, — the God of peace and 
love, — who images himself in Nature, in this magnificent 
orb of day. No wonder that so many races of men have 
worshipped the sun. In how many ways does it resemble 
its Maker ! Like God, it shines on the evil and the good. 
It is the eye of the world, seeing all things, only never seeing 
a shadow : as God cannot look on evil ; for evil, when he 
looks on it, becomes purified in his light. All life, move- 
ment, activity, it is well said, come from the sun. It hides 
itself from us, like God, in an excess of light. The most 
brilliant light which man can produce, even the electric light, 
makes only a black spot on the surface of the sun, and so 
our brightest wisdom is only folly before God. As the sun 
marches through his twelve houses he creates the seasons — 
spring, summer, autumn, winter ; and so God creates ever- 
more in human life the revolving seasons of childhood, youth, 



850 



THE SUMMER IS ENDED. 



manhood, and age. The sun, as the French poet Ronsard 
sings,— 

" Rests without rest ; stands still, but makes no stay, — 
Nature's first-born, and father of the day." 

As the sun reaches out into the farthest depths of space 
with irresistible force, and yet moves all things according to a 
great unchanging order, so God governs the universe, not by 
pure will, but by will and law. Even the spots on the solar 
surface are now found to have their law of periodic return, 
and come and go in cycles of years. So the darkness which 
seems to hide the face of God, the total eclipse of faith 
which chills the heart and mind, and the doubts which pass 
across our belief like spots on the sun, have also their laws, 
which we shall one day understand, as we now understand 
the laws of the solar eclipse, which once terrified impious 
nations with fear of an eternal night. 

So, as we never tire of sunlight, let us rejoice in the 
sunshine of God. As in the morning we love to see the 
glorious lamp of the regent of day, "jocund to run his 
longitude through heaven's high road," while " the gray 
dawn and the Pleiades dance before him, shedding sweet 
influence," so rejoice when God's morning dawms in the 
heart, though its light be as yet gray and dull. As the plan- 
ets repair to the sun to draw light in their golden urns, and 
the morning star gilds the duplicate horns of her bediamond- 
ed crescent at its beams, so let all our minds draw truth from 
God, and in this light see light. And as we love to linger 
to see the sun descending in the west, with wheels bending 
over the ocean-brim, and shooting his dewy ray parallel to 
the earth, so rejoice when our human life fades away from 
us in a sunset of radiance, and w r e see the night coming when 
we fall asleep to dream of God, and wake again in his pres- 
ence. Even the great sun sinks away out of our sight, and 
seems to perish every day ; but w r e know r that sinking here, 



THE SUMMER IS ENDED. 



351 



he is rising there. This week there was a sunset of uncom- 
mon beauty. The western sky flamed with dusky red and 
rosy yellow, and was swept with stormy clouds, but interpen- 
etrated everywhere with warm, celestial radiance ; while a 
rainbow in the east seemed to say, u Sink, dear sun ; but 
sink in hope to rise again in joy." So let our life go down, 
attended with cloudy witnesses and rainbow promises of the 
past and the future. 

The final question therefore is, Are we saved with a Chris- 
tian salvation? Are we living with or without God in the 
world? Have we, with this human peace which makes our 
land rejoice, also the peace of God which passes all under- 
standing? Yesterday, the 54th Regiment of colored troops 
marched through Boston, on its return from the war, and was 
disbanded. Ah, could we do our work as that regiment has 
done its work ! Those humble men, that despised race, have 
been chosen by God as his instruments in putting down the 
proud rebellion. When they fought and fell at Fort Wagner, 
they shook the hearts of the south with terror at the thought 
of slaves turned into soldiers. They have helped to achieve 
the safety of the nation and the deliverance of their race. 
So God chooses " the weak things of the earth to confound 
the things that are mighty ; and base things of the earth, and 
things despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are 
not, to bring to nought things which are." 

So, though summer be ended, the better part of summer 
need not be ended. We shall take it with us into winter. 
Whatever Ave have seen of God in nature, felt of God in our 
hearts, and done for God with our hands, makes a perpetual 
summer within. The outward summer comes and goes : the 
summer of the heart shall abide forevermore. 



XXX. 



"GOD SAVE THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHU- 
SETTS." 

rFlHE subject of my discourse to-day is the prayer at the 



JL end of our annual proclamations — u God sate the 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts ! " * 

So far as they are living and progressive bodies, commu- 
nities, states, nations, cities, societies, have, or may have, 
souls to be saved. It is said, I know, in a popular proverb, 
that corporations have none. This may be true of business 
corporations, the main object of which is to make money, and 
which cannot, as corporations, take account of anything else 
than the interest of the concern. You may choose, as direct- 
ors of a bank, the most charitable men among the stock- 
holders ; but the charitable side of their characters will not 
appear when they are deciding what notes are to be dis- 
counted. They cannot lend the money of the bank from 
charitable considerations. In this sense, therefore, it is true 



* In this discourse I am not praising Massachusetts people, but 
Massachusetts ideas. I have been obliged to devote so many 
Thanksgiving and Fast sermons to our sins, northern and southern, 
to our contempt of our brother man, to our pursuit of selfish ends, 
that I was glad to give one to loving gratitude for the ideas of the old 
Mother State. I am speaking here only of the ideas we have inher- 
ited from God and our ancestors. TVe may be very unfaithful to 
them — we have been unfaithful to them; but the ideas, neverthe- 
less, are ours, and vitalize our lives, and deserve to be recognized 
gratefully in our Thanksgiving services. 




(352) 



GOD SAVE THE COMMONWEALTH. 



353 



that corporations have no souls. Bat let men go from all 
parts of the world to settle Kansas or Nevada — there will 
gradually come to them some common character ; some- 
thing like a soul will come up to every such community, 
which all will share ; so that by and by you can tell a Kansas 
man from a Nevada man. So a type arises, derived from 
their special surroundings — their occupations, their institu- 
tions, the public opinion which dominates their minds. Why 
are the people of Massachusetts so different from those of 
Connecticut? They had at first the same origin, the same 
institutions, the same religion, the same climate, soil, occu- 
pations. Yet how different they are ! Massachusetts is intel- 
lectually active, Connecticut more slow. One is progressive, 
the other conservative. The one is hospitable to all new ideas, 
the other is reluctant to accept them. Why should the Uni- 
tarians have a hundred churches in Massachusetts, and only 
one in Connecticut? Why should Massachusetts lead the 
nation in the great movements for the abolition of slavery, 
for temperance, criminal reform ; and Connecticut take so 
little interest in these matters? Why should Massachusetts 
be the firm, uncompromising radical leader of the Republi- 
cans in politics, and Connecticut waver uncertainly between 
one political party and the other? Who can tell? Some- 
how each state has its own intellectual and moral character ; 
each state has its soul, and the two are always and inevita- 
bly as different as any two men are different. Their souls 
are different. That is all we can say. 

Xow, the soul of a state does not consist in the number of 
its population, nor its wealth per man, nor its climate, and 
soil, and manufactures ; all this belongs to its body. The soul 
of a state is in its Ideas ; and when we say, 44 God save the 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts/' we mean, " God protect 
and preserve the Ideas of Massachusetts." The state is 
destroyed, not when its wealth melts away, but when its 
ideas are corrupted. Massachusetts has been poor in wealth 
23 



354 



GOD SAVE THE COMMONWEALTH 



once and again, but it has never been poor in ideas : so its 
soul has not faded or died. 

The soul of a state is in its ideas. What are the ideas of 
Massachusetts ? 

1. First, look at its Ideas concerning Industry. 

In Massachusetts, work has always been honorable, idle- 
ness always a disgrace. A man with nothing to do does not 
feel himself at home among us. He feels, like a truant 
school-boy, very lonely. It is not very amusing, nor very 
respectable, here, to be idle. Our greatest men are those 
who work the hardest — work with hand, work with brain, 
with cunning faculty, with accomplished powers. Oar aris- 
tocrats are not those who loll on sofas or drive fast horses ; 
but merchants, whose vessels whiten every sea ; lawyers, 
who carry on a case as if it were a great battle ; physicians, 
who take no rest, night or day, till the disease has been 
beaten back from their patients' door. In some countries, it 
is not so. In the slave states, it has always been held vul- 
gar to labor ; and so their native energy has been sicklied 
over with this disease of sloth. In France, before the Revo- 
lution, government was a contrivance by which millions of 
laborers could be compelled to support in idle amusements 
the thousands who considered themselves gentlemen. But 
in Massachusetts we work because we believe in work, not 
because we are obliged to. It is one of our Ideas. 

What we are individually, that we are collectively. A 
book called the " Industry of Massachusetts" was published 
by the order of the legislature, two years ago, giving the 
capital invested, persons employed, and annual product of 
the farms, forests, mines, and manufactories in each of the 
three hundred and thirty-three towns in the state ; from which 
it appears that Massachusetts, with 1,200,000 inhabitants in 
1860, — now, perhaps, 1,500,000, — gave an aggregate of 
industrial products for the year ending May 1, 1865, of 
§517,240,613, being about a million and a half of dollars 



OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



555 



for each working day in the year; $1.00 for each man, 
woman, and child, old and young, sick and well. The prod- 
uct of cotton manufactures in the state during that year 
was 854,000,000; of calico, 825,000,000; of woollen cloths, 
$48,000,000 ; of paper, 69,000,000 ; of boots and shoes, 
$52,000,000; of the whale fishery, $6,000,000 ; of printing 
and newspapers, $5,000,000 ; of iron and nails, $8,000,000 ; 
of clothing, $17,000,000. That may be called a working 
community. Go out on any of our railroads, get out at a 
station, take a carriage, and drive in any direction. You 
will find poor, sterile fields, covered with stones, apparently 
incapable of supporting any population. Presently you come 
to a town in which all the houses are comfortable, all in 
repair, all neat. You ask, u Where do these people get the 
means of living?" A man points to a noisy brook running 
through a hollow. They have shut it in, set it to work, and 
they are making cotton-gins for the southern planters ; they 
are making sewing-machines to send to Illinois ; or saddles, 
or railroad cars, or shovels for California miners ; or they 
get out ice from their pond to ship to Calcutta ; or they 
braid straw ; or make gimlets, artificial teeth, chocolate, or 
refrigerators. 

2. Thus another of the Ideas of Massachusetts is that labor 
shall never be drudgery, but always Art. Into all work she 
puts thought. That is why our little state, containing only 
seven thousand eight hundred square miles, the smallest but 
three of the thirty-eight in area, is the seventh *in population. 
As labor is elevated, the land can support always a larger 
number to the square mile. A few thousand Indians, who 
live by hunting, require a territory as large as Texas, with 
its two hundred and seventy-four thousand square miles, to 
roam over. The Indians of the north-west are much dis- 
pleased with our Pacific Railroad running across the plains, 
because the engines scare the buffaloes. They tell us " if 
we want peace, we can have it by taking away the rail- 



356 



GOD SAVE THE COMMONWEALTH 



road." A grazing community needs more land than a 
farming community. In some of the towns in Hampshire 
County, they told me the population had fallen off, be- 
cause the farmers had ceased cultivating their land, and 
were raising cattle for the market. Add manufactures to 
farming ; diversify manufactures, as is done in Massachu- 
setts ; let commerce come in also, — and no one can tell the 
maximum of population which a state can support. In 
population to the square mile, Massachusetts stands at the 
head of the thirty-eight states, having one hundred and fifty- 
seven. But if you were to drive along the road from one 
end of the state to another, you would think three fourths 
of it yet a desert. Massachusetts can and will support 
one thousand or ten thousand to the square mile more easily 
than she now supports one hundred and fifty-seven. For 
she supports the present number of one hundred and fifty- 
seven far more easily than she formerly maintained fifty, 
ten, or five. So much for Malthas and his theory of the 
danger of an increased population. 

The State Prison this year, for the first time, will cease 
to cost the state anything. It more than supports itself — a 
thing unheard of in the history of prisons. The five hun- 
dred convicts, instead of hammering stone or picking hemp, 
are all taught to be skilful workmen. The prison shops 
produce bronzes which took prizes in the Paris Exposition, 
and mouldings of the finest quality. Though the convicts 
receive nothing for their labor, they are as proud of their 
skill as if they were to receive one of the medals of the Legion 
of Honor. When labor is drudgery, it tires ; as it rises into 
the region of art, it brings perpetual joy with it. Educate 
and elevate labor by an infusion of thought, and you make 
the laborer happy and contented. The man who has learned 
to manage a steam-hammer of twenty tons so as either to 
cut in two a log of iron or to put a point to a nail, may only 



OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



357 



receive his two or three dollars a day ; but he is happy in 
the exercise of an accomplishment. 

3. Therefore it is that one of the Ideas of Massachusetts, 
from the first, has been to educate the whole community. 
In our public schools, common to all and free to all, sup- 
ported by the voluntary tax of each town, all the children 
of the state are educated. The system established by our 
Board of Education works so well that we know every year 
the number of children out of the whole population in the 
schools of each town in the state, with all the other facts 
concerning it. About one in five of the whole population of 
Massachusetts attend school ; and the amount raised in this 
state every year during the civil war, by taxation alone, for 
the public schools, was $1,500,000. During all the war, 
while she put into the army and navy 160,000 men, she kept 
at school 250,000 children out of her 1,250,000 total popu- 
lation. 

4. Another of the Ideas of Massachusetts is Humanity. 
The state cares for all its children, and feels bound to look 
after them all. Its maxim is that of its Master : " Those 
who are whole need not a physician ; but those who are 
sick." To be sure, we only approximate to that idea as yet. 
But we have the idea. This state calls no man common or 
unclean. It says to no one, " You are good for nothing ; 
you are worthless." These phrases, "worthless," "good 
for nothing," are not found in the Massachusetts dictionary 
any more than in the vocabulary of Jesus Christ. The 
blind, the insane, the idiots, the deaf and dumb, the thieves, 
the drunkards, — and if there be anything worse or lower 
than these, — these are not good for nothing, but good for 
something ; and the old state, our good mother, takes pains 
to give sight to her blind in her asylums, and hearing and 
speech to her deaf and dumb ; to illuminate the torpid mind 
of the idiot ; to cool the heated brain of the insane ; to teach 
those who have never learned self-control how to govern their 



358 



GOD SAVE THE COMMONWEALTH 



passions. And never was this — I will not say paternal 
government, but rather this maternal — government carried 
farther than in the administration of our last governor, John 
A. Andrew ; who, amid the immense labors and anxieties of 
the civil war, never forgot to visit annually the prisons, the 
schools, the hospitals, and to open his great heart and mind 
to the humblest appeals from the lowest citizen. 

The state has established a Board of Charities, which pub- 
lishes a volume every year. This volume is a record of the 
motherly tenderness of the state towards her poor, suffering 
children. It shows that she feels, not a cold, hard sense of 
the duty of doing something for the poor, the sick, the 
neglected, but an interest in them, as those who need most 
thought and love. This book treats of the care bestowed 
by the state on alien passengers arriving by sea ; on the 
lunatics in her three asylums ; on the sick in her hospitals ; 
on the poor in her almshouses ; on the blind in her blind 
asylum ; on deserted children ; on the prisoners at Charles- 
town ; on the Reform Schools for children at Westborough 
and Lancaster, and the school ships ; on the deaf and dumb ; 
on the Washingtonian Home ; on the Discharged Soldier's 
Home ; and the Home for Reformed Women at Dedham 
and Springfield. The state holds in her beneficent arms all 
these her poor, sad, suffering children, and appoints her 
wisest and best men and women to look after them and care 
for them. 

In England, lately, a London paper, the Lancet, has ex- 
posed the dreadful condition of neglect into which some of the 
workhouses had fallen. The peculiarity of the case was, 
that the machinery seemed perfect. There were regular 
superintendents, whose duty it was to watch and see that it 
was all right ; inspectors to watch them; a board of direct- 
ors to see that the inspectors did their duty, and a general 
supervising board to watch the whole. Notwithstanding all 



OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



359 



this, no one watched anything. Bat when a London paper 
sent down its reporter, he discovered, in a few hours, and 
disclosed to the nation, abuses which had escaped the obser- 
vation of all these officials. Why was this? The machinery 
was there ; but the soul was not there. The idea of Massa- 
chusetts, that these are the poor, helpless children, to whom 
the mother is bound to give her chief thought and love — 
this was not there. That was the reason. No one watched 
for them, because no one cared for them. 

5. From all these roots Massachusetts derives her Political 
Ideas. She is a democracy, through and through. She be- 
lieves in human rights as such ; in man as man. Her democ- 
racy does not consist in flattering the prejudices of the poor 
on election day, but in seeing that the children of the poor 
shall all be educated ; that the suffering among the poor 
shall all be cared for, and that every one of her three hun- 
dred and thirty-three towns shall give to every man in its 
borders equal rights, and an equal chance with every other 
man. In this nation there were two wholly hostile systems 
of politics : that of Massachusetts and that of South Caro- 
lina. The one was represented by John Quincy Adams, the 
other by John Caldwell Calhoun. These ideas came into 
conflict, as ideas, at Washington, on the floor of Congress ; 
and then with a million soldiers on the bloody battle-fields 
of the Rebellion. Massachusetts Ideas conquered on both 
fields. In 1837, John Quincy Adams rose, on the floor of 
Congress, and said, " I hold in my hand a petition purport' 
ing to be from slaves in Virginia and could not finish his 
explanation for three days, on account of the tumult of rage 
and violence which those words excited. It was proposed 
to expel him ; to suspend him ; to compel him to make au 
apology ; to rebuke him by the Speaker ; to pass a vote of 
censure. At the end of three days the storm subsided, for it 
was found difficult to censure or expel a man for saying that 
he held in his hand a petition, purporting to be from slaves. 



360 



GOD SAVE THE COMMONWEALTH 



Then his time came, and lie answered every person who had 
spoken during those three days, showing their ignorance of 
the constitution, of history, of law, of logic. It was like a 
schoolmaster administering correction to some twenty noisy 
children. One by one, each man who had attacked him was 
exposed. But perhaps the climax was reached, when, com- 
menting on the suggestion of a member from South Carolina 
that he might be punished by a jury for words spoken in de- 
bate, he said, " If such be the law of South Carolina, I 
thank God that I am not a citizen of South Carolina ! " On 
that day Northern ideas defeated those of the South in the 
first of the series of victories which ended on the field of 
Gettysburg, in the march of Sherman, the fall of Charleston, 
the occupation of Richmond by colored regiments, and the 
surrender of Lee to Grant. And these victories will not 
cease until the colored people at the North and South are all 
admitted to equal rights. There is a little eddy just now, 
which seems to set backward ; but the great current of im- 
partial justice rolls on, and will roll on — " in omne volubilis 
cevum." 

6. Massachusetts has also her Religious Ideas, which are 
the most central and vital of all. These ideas of God. duty, 
immortality, — of Christ and his kingdom on earth, — founded 
the state, and have kept it. The religion of Massachusetts, 
differing in doctrines, has always involved two principles. — 
the freedom and independence of each church, and the appli- 
cation of religion to human life. Our Pilgrim Fathers came 
here that they might be free from the constraint of bishops, 
and that they might apply Christianity to building up a 
Christian commonwealth. The religion of Massachusetts 
has. from the beginning, been a liberal religion and a practical 
religion. Any infidelity to either principle arose from some 
seeming conflict with its opposite. If they were intolerant 
to Baptists and Quakers, it was because Baptists and Qua- 
kers interfered with their work of making a Christian Com- 



OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



361 



monwealth. They wanted them out of their way — that was 
all. As soon as Roger Williams went to Rhode Island, they 
let him alone. Whenever Massachusetts has been intoler- 
ant in her religion, it was because she wished to be practical 
in her religion. Wherever she has become vague, abstract, 
metaphysical, and impractical in her religion, it was from 
following too far the other impulse towards intellectual free- 
dom. This is certain, that Massachusetts religion is as dis- 
tinct as Massachusetts politics. It may call itself Orthodox 
or Unitarian, Methodist or Episcopal ; but Massachusetts 
Orthodoxy is not like Orthodoxy elsewhere : it is more free 
and more practical. Massachusetts Unitarianism is not like 
Polish or English Unitarianism. Our Christianity here in 
Massachusetts is, in its spirit, the natural outgrowth of our 
ideas, and so has a unity of its own amid all its diversity. 
Its spirit is freedom, its method is practice. Practice brings 
it back from any aberrations which excess of freedom may 
engender. Freedom corrects any shallowness arising from a 
too narrow view of expediency. 

Such are our Massachusetts ideas. These are the soul 
of our state. States only die when their soul dies. As long 
as their soul remains, defeat is not destruction ; death is not 
the end. They rise again, as Greece rose after the Persian 
armies had swept over it, as Rome arose after the Gauls 
and Carthaginians had vanquished it. Greece and Rome 
lived by their ideas. Inspired by art, beauty, law, they 
grew, and filled the earth with their renown. It is not a 
great body, but a great soul which makes the state. Greece, 
a mere spot on the map of the world, lives an immortal life 
in her ideas, though her bodily existence as a state has been 
gone for two thousand years. China, with her three hun- 
dred millions, her enormous territory, and her tenacity of 
outward existence, is like an embalmed corpse — "clay, 
not dead but soulless." China seems dead while she lives. 
Greece lives, though dead ; and the long torpid body is also 



362 



GOD SAVE THE COMMONWEALTH 



awakening to new life on the mountains of Crete, in heroes 
worthy of their sires. 

How, then, are states saved? Jesus answers, when he 
says to his disciples, " Ye are the salt." Men in whom the 
ideas of the state are incarnate, these renew its decaying life. 
God has saved the Commonwealth by the long line of illus- 
trious men in whom its ideas have burned deepest, making 
them a shining light and a warning fire. The Pilgrim Fa- 

O © © © 

thers, whose enthusiasm lay so deep beneath their Puritanic 
manners — the most ideal men of their age, though seeming 

© 7 © O 

the most prosaic, because their thoughts ran farthest into the 
future, — Winthrop, Winslow, Standish, John Eliot, the 
apostle to the Indians ; Sir Harry Vane, from whose repub- 
lican integrity Oliver Cromwell longed to be delivered ; 
Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams, proto-martyrs to the 
principles of religious freedom ; the men of the Revolution, 
Samuel Adams, Hancock, Jonathan Mayhew, the Quincys 
and the Adamses, Beecher, Channing, Theodore Parker, 
Horace Mann ; the generous souls who have died in this last 
war for the state ; and not the least in this long line of illus- 
trious men, our own brother and friend, John Andrew. 
These are our salt ; and by such men, and such lives, God 
has saved, and will save, the Commonwealth of Massachu- 
setts. 

In the story of Abraham and Sodom, we read the saving 
power of a few good men in a state. Ten good men could 
have saved Sodom. But such men must be really good men ; 
men in whom the principle is so strong that it moulds all 
their life to itself ; men who live for their principle. Such 
men are like candles, throwing their beams far out into the 
stormy night, and guiding the w-anderer home. They are 
the city set on a hill, which cannot be hid. On this day of 
Thanksgiving, therefore, while thanking God for all his other 
gifts, let us thank him most of all for good men — men lov- 
ing justice, truth, freedom, Christianity, more than comfort 



OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



363 



or peace ; men ready to live and die for an idea ; enthusiasts 
for goodness and right. These are the men who make a 
state strong and permanent. 

Good men save the state ; but they can only save it when 
all other men are capable of being moved and led by their 
shining examples. A time comes, in the downfall and cor- 
ruption of communities, when good men only struggle inef- 
fectually against the tendencies of ruin. Hannibal could not 
save Carthage. Marcus Antonius could not save the Ro- 
man Empire. Demosthenes could not save Greece, and 
Jesus Christ himself could not save Jerusalem from de- 
cay and destruction. Nations can go too far to be saved. 
The great hope of this land is in the fact that the mass of 
the people mean right, and, unless misled by demagogues, 
will do right. But, for this hope to be realized, all Christians 
and all patriots must work together. The great danger 
to-day is not from the President. Salvation to-day is not 
to be expected from the next President. President Johnson 
has ceased to be powerful enough to hurt us. Our danger 
is that the people, tired with the sacrifices demanded by the 
war, will leave public affairs to mere politicians, and devote 
themselves to their private interests. The nation has three 
great duties to perform, which it cannot delegate to parties 
or party leaders. It is bound to see that the colored people, 
whom it has emancipated, have a fair start and full protec- 
tion in all their rights. This can only be done by securing 
to them education and the ballot. It is bound to see that the 
Union is restored ; and this can only be done by a generous 
but wise treatment of the Southern States. They must be 
led into the Union by their hopes ; they cannot be driven 
into it by their fears. Open to them a new career, a new 
prospect of prosperity ; encourage all southern industry, and 
so change their hearts. The third duty of the nation is to 
pay its debt, and this cannot be done until we resume specie 
payments. We cannot resume specie payments till the cir- 



364 



GOD SAYE THE COMMONWEALTH. 



dilation is reduced. Merchants and business men must 
learn to look forward to a fall of prices in everything, and. be 
prepared for it. And the mass of the people must keep up 
the tone they had during the war — a tone of patriotic readi- 
ness to make sacrifices, and to give freely of time, thought, 
and means to the interests of the country. 

Thank God for all. And when our sister states in the 
South and West, who sit on the vast corn-bearing prairies 
of the Mississippi, or by the blue Pacific, shall say, " Sister 
Massachusetts, why do you claim to lead the nation? You 
are old ; we are young. You have only a little piece of bar- 
ren land ; we have mighty acres. You have neither gold, 
nor iron, nor coal, nor wheat, nor cotton, nor sugar. Your 
people, compared with ours, are few, your cities small," — 
Massachusetts may reply, " Sisters, if I lead, it is because 
you choose to follow where I go. If I stamp my character 
on the nation, it is because of the truth of the ideas in which 
I believe. It is not the body of Massachusetts, but the soul 
of Massachusetts, which you follow. Follow me only so 
long as I follow truth, freedom, justice, impartial right, hu- 
man progress, and the guiding providence of God." And 
then shall all the sister states, with consenting voice, cry out 
together, " God save the Commonwealth of Massa- 
chusetts ! " 




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